I Remember Something: A Turian Memoir of the Reaper War
by Esquire 6
Summary: Until recently, the story of Blackwatch, the Turian Hierarchy's most accomplished Special Forces unit, has been one of mystery and silence. Now, that silence has broken. Retired Blackwatch Colonel Caenus Pius tells all on his Reaper War experiences, from the opening salvos on Taetrus, to the final counter-attack on Earth. Meet the hidden face of the Turian War Machine. [Cancelled]
1. Chapter 1

**AN/: Hi everyone!**

**This project is the synthesis of many years of reading countless books and repeatedly failing to write a squad-based combat memoir. If you look in my profile, you'll see that I've primarily focused my efforts the past few years now on writing Ace Combat stories. But the appeal for me in that area has significantly faded, and after desperately searching for an series that could help me accomplish writing the story I've wanted to tell, Mass Effect finally appeared to me as the answer. I've played the original trilogy for over a decade now, and still find new aspects of it that I enjoy every time I replay the series. **

**However, after seeing the thousands upon thousands of Commander Shepard stories on this site, I decided that I would take a leap and tell a new one. Specifically, a Turian centric one. The Turians have always been fascinating to me, and I felt that a story from their perspective during the Reaper War would be a really fun and interesting twist. The Codex entries and news reports concerning the War on Taetrus really piqued my curiosity and I knew this was something I wanted to include as the background for the main characters involved. Naturally, with the Reaper War, Commander Shepard will show up, just in a minor, rather than a major role. Of course, I can't say I'm the greatest expert on all things Mass Effect. I have made some decisions about how I think things would be in a fairly realistic scheme of things. Of course, you may disagree with my opinions and choices, and that's fine. **

**Because, first and foremost, this story is really a love letter to all the great war memoirs I've been fortunate to read over the course of my life that have profoundly impacted my outlook as a person(a list of which can be seen on my profile page). This story is also a tribute to those who have taken that higher calling upon themselves, several of whom I owe a great debt to for sharing their precious time and experiences with me.**

**I hope you enjoy the journey.**

**Stay frosty everyone,**

**Esquire 6.**

* * *

_"Necessitas etiam timidos fortes facit. / Necessity makes even the timid brave."_

_-from the _Bellum Catilinae_ by Gaius Sallustius Crispus_

_This book was published in 2196 CE, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the end of the Reaper War. Although not widely circulated at first, the book was lauded by veterans of many conflicts for its honest depictions of combat and how the war affected individual soldiers. Caenus Pius, a former Turian Blackwatch soldier, writes a sweeping tale, from first contact with the Reapers on Taetrus with the desperate defense of Forward Operating Base Hadrius, to his later exploits in the war, and the final battle for Earth. Despite his stark determination to include classified operations, which did make the final cut, the Turian Hierarchy quietly approved of the novel due to its popularity among Turian troops. Even Garrus Vakarian, a long-time partner to the legendary Commander Shepard, commented himself: "I can think of no better way to gain insight on the world of the Reaper War than to read Pius' '_I Remember Something'.

_Note: This version of the book has been revised for the benefit of Alliance and Human readers. Time and measurement units have been adjusted accordingly and are all in Alliance units unless specified. Other versions can be bought both virtually and physically through Epsilon books or wherever fine non-fiction memoirs are sold. _

* * *

**Introduction: Forget Everything and Remember**

It feels as if centuries have passed since the Reaper War already, even though it's really only been about ten years since it all ended. Of course, the Reaper War was a lot more than just a simple shooting conflict on the edges of space. It's hard to contemplate in peace-time just how desperate an all-space invasion is, where every home-world is under some measure of pressure from enemy forces.

But that's exactly what the Reapers did. From day one, everyone was pretty much under threat, and each party was desperately trying to get help for themselves at the expense of each other. Of course, I was not Commander Shepard. I was not the one who united all the races of the galaxy to create the largest fleet any of us had ever seen. I was only a small, minuscule part of that success.

Turians now and during the war call me a hero. To this day, the title feels misplaced to me. For Turians, carrying out the actions I did was expected. There were no large debates about what to do when the Reapers hit Taetrus and were bearing down on the Forward Operation Base I was stationed at, with minimal and disappearing support. Fighting was our only option, and little did I know at the time, success in fighting the Reapers was rare. And although I would be hard pressed to call what happened a success, sometimes survival in itself is a victory of a rare form.

Of course, the Forward Operating Base I defended on Taetrus to this day is still mostly classified. A lot of the data and communications that were intercepted through the base is held under lock and key by the Turian Hierarchy. I'd like to hope it would all eventually come out, but for my people, that's highly optimistic thinking. We prefer silence to the noise and clatter of infighting.

As for myself and my squad, we are the elements of FOB Hadrius that have come into light of common knowledge. Although the Turian Blackwatch is something kept under wraps, all of us who survived the whole ordeal have grown much more willing to discuss what happened during the war. We'd like to think that we are the pride of the Turian ground forces, and to some extent that is true. In a recent roundtable event that I participated in with other surviving veterans of the war, several individuals, across a broad spectrum of races and militaries expressed profound gratitude for what my unit did to help. I reiterated my belief that such a conclusion was over-emphasizing our importance, but my humility has been challenged, I must admit, after facing constant praise for several years now.

But I have faced my fair share of detractors. Some have expressed anger at uncovering painful, graphic, and traumatic memories of soldiers who have passed. Turian ways order our silence over the lost soldiers on the battlefield. And while I somewhat agreed with the policy during the War on Taetrus, which I participated in as a young lieutenant, I grew angrier with the policy over time. Especially following the Reaper War, I grew more upset after being forced to sit on my story. Luckily, through the help of some incredibly kind individuals, including some of my fellow Blackwatch veterans and even Garrus Vakarian himself, I was able to get the platform I needed to tell my story. I am eternally indebted to these wonderful brothers-in-arms for their assistance in getting this work published. Without them…I'm not sure I would be speaking through these pages to readers…or to anyone for that matter.

Although the Hierarchy is probably shaking their heads at my above denigration of their policy, I will admit with no hesitation that I owe them and the Turian military a great deal for what they provided me. Invaluable training of body and mind, comrades of an exceptional caliber, and above all else, a life. I didn't make much of myself prior to the rite of passage that is boot camp at age 15. I wouldn't have traded it for anything else. Despite the suffering and all that goes along with war, it gave me a very unique platform to tell a story that I find myself solely capable of telling.

But, I should speak about who I am so the story is not as confusing.

My name is Caenus Pius. At the beginning of this whole story I was a recently promoted Captain put in charge of the defense team of FOB Hadrius, located in the rocky hills just outside the Diluvian Highlands, which was the primary battleground of the War on Taetrus. The war was essentially a separatist movement wishing for autonomy against the Turian Hierarchy, which was jump-started by a terrorist attack by the separatists on the capital of Taetrus, where a ship was sabotaged to crash into the city at full FTL speed, killing untold thousands. The Facinus faction claimed responsibility, and the colony government, backed by the Hierarchy, went to war. There was a quite a racket made by the human press who defied Turian governmental restrictions on broadcasting images of the battlefields. Much of the human press deemed our war "barbarous" and seemingly waged with no regard for civilians. The response that many of our soldiers gave to the other races was this:

There is no such thing as a turian civilian.

For many who were in the Reaper War, the War on Taetrus was where many of us sharpened our talons and skills in war. But it was hard for many of us, some, including myself, knew colonists who were fighting with the Facinus group and actively trying to kills us. But as Blackwatch, who had already experienced hostile domestic terrorists and other unsavory elements on Palaven, we kept our mouths shut and fought. But the scale of Taetrus campaign was enormous.

The whole of the Diluvian Wildlands became a graveyard for many Turians of both sides. By the time of the Reaper War, the wounds of the war hadn't quite fully healed. Animosity was especially felt due to the six-ton thermobaric bomb that was dropped on the Kasatum Fortress, the last holdout of Facinus forces on the planet. From where FOB Hadrius stood on an outcrop overlooking the Wildlands, you could still see the crater and the ruins therein of the destroyed fortress. It was a sobering reminder to everyone of the horrors and destruction of war. It was true that Facinus had brought such a wrath upon itself. I would hardly call its tactics endearing, but it was smart in showing they had a power to strike at the heart of their 'enemy'. Although their tactics were relatively hopeless due to their numerical and technological inferiority, they held out much longer than many expected.

As for FOB Hadrius, the base was downsized and relegated to relative isolation and secrecy following the official declaration of the end of the war in 2185 CE. Hadrius was one of the few frontline bases that was maintained and kept relatively active. We were the front line interception post of communication and data entering and leaving the former area of rebellion, as well as the primary point of intercepting and decoding other interplanetary comms. At its peak, FOB Hadrius had about a hundred troops on base, with about a quarter for defense. After the downsizing, there were only 39 left. Out of that number, just four individuals, including myself, were assigned to be the primary ground defense for the base. We did have a gunship and a crew for air support, along with one shuttle for emergencies. But if anything big happened, the base would have to be evacuated with outside help. There was no chance of a prolonged defense beyond a few days, despite the relatively advantageous position in hills.

We were a classified base, yet everyone in the surrounding area knew exactly what was going on. The four of us ground troops that were on station were all Blackwatch. We had been picked to stay for either rest time, since the sector was unusually quiet following the drawdown, and due to our backgrounds on the planet. As for myself, my platoon had been rotated out of the theater a long time ago. However, due to my promotion to Captain, I was still waiting for reassignment to a new command, but following the flood of promotions that came as a result of the war, I was left in relative limbo. For the rest of the squad…I might as well start the real story.

But I'd like to say one last thing before I do.

This story is dedicated to all the soldiers who didn't make it home in the countless wars this galaxy has faced. I hope, to those who read this story, it can give some modicum of comfort to know what our lives were like, and know that just showing up to the fight was courageous, and to fight on after that was the work of a hero. I met countless scores of these heroes in my travels. May their spirits guide my words truthfully and faithfully.

Without further delay,

Welcome to the Had.

* * *

**Chapter 1: Wilderness of the Mind**

"I hate wearing these night vision extensions," a voice crackled over my comms, as I glanced over towards the source, my second-in-command Lieutenant Lucus Albilin. He was standing on the opposite walkway from me, both of which overlooked the base's main gate, with the darkness of the Wildlands stretching far out in front of us.

"Yeah," I replied back, rubbing the side of my helmet, in a poor attempt to scratch an itch, "It feels like a varren is sitting on the front of my face. Sure, it's great if you're in a static position like this, but the weight has got to be trimmed down. Hopefully Armax will release a new model soon."

"By the spirits of this place, I sure fucking hope so," Lucus chuckled, as he lifted up his sniper rifle, a retrofitted Armax Punisher, and half-heartedly took a glance down the scope. "What do they think we're going to see out here anyway, ghosts or something? There hasn't been shit in Diluvia for months."

"Unfortunately we just have to sit around on our asses and hope the Had gets closed or we get transitioned out."

"As much as I like the peace and quiet, Caen, I'm ready to go back to active duty. I'd like to go home and see the family in Palaven for a little bit, though."

"Don't we all. I was supposed to go see my brother and his wife on the Citadel two months back when the rotation call got scrapped. Apparently they had a place scoped out for me to buy for myself."

"Really?"

"Yeah, they sent pictures of it. Not super big, but nice."

"I wish I had such sympathetic siblings."

I sighed, as my vision drifted back towards the plant growth and the Wildlands. I gripped my modified Phaeston assault rifle a little bit tighter as a small heat signature of an animal darted by and quickly disappeared. "Well, my sister-in-law is a human, so that probably has something to do with it."

"Ahhhh," Lucus chimed back in as he walked over towards me, placing his rifle on his back, while it collapsed down to a relatively small size, "You never said she was human."

"Yeah she's from Earth. A German."

"A what?"

"A German."

"What does that mean?"

"It's a place. They sometimes speak an older language that differs from Alliance English. You know what England is, right?"

"I have a vague idea."

"There's a strip of water separating England, which is an island, from a continent called Europe. Germany, the place the Germans are from, is there."

"Huh," Lucus said as he went silent, looking up at me as he leaned down, hands clasped to the rails separating him from falling the five to seven meter drop to the dirt. "I never knew you were so versed in human things."

"I went there."

"Really, when?"

"My brother's wedding was there."

"That's quite the rare event."

"Her parents couldn't afford the trip to the Citadel and all the arrangements. They're well-to-do farmers but not wealthy. It wasn't bad."

"You're a weird one, Caen."

"Yeah…I know."

A few seconds later we both felt a slight rumbling in the air, and Lucus sighed as he pulled out his rifle again. Not a moment later, a matte grey Kodiak shuttle shot by, a bit of a ways over our heads, heading for the Had's landing pad in the center of the compound, behind us.

"Team two, this is Feral actual, a shuttle's inbound over."

"Roger actual, team two is inbound to the pad, over and out," the Taetrian drawl of Lieutenant Pausanias Agocus or 'Pago' responded quickly as the base's interior lights flicked into life, flooding the compound with artificial light. Lucus and I both took off our night vision attachments for our helmets and hopped down to see what the fuss was about.

Now, seeing a Blackwatch soldier in the flesh for the first time, is something, that even for Turians is surprising. No other unit is allowed to go completely black-out for their unit colors. Blackwatch as a whole for the most part disregarded painted camouflage on armor and used Tactical Cloaks for that purpose, for those who even needed that. The four of us on base had added a few white streaks onto the abdomen piece of our armor to distinguish us from other Blackwatch units. I had gone even further and painted fake white fangs on the lower part of my helmet for added intimidation factor, although I doubted it really did anything. The matte black paint was really the major scare factor.

When Lucus and I rocked up to the shuttle, and met with team two, we quickly discovered it was simply a delayed supply run, with much needed food and care packages from home. All of our moods were much improved.

"Hey Vellia!" I called out to the number four of our fireteam, Lieutenant Vellia Macer, who quickly glared from behind her helmet over in my direction, "Package for you!"

I quickly picked up the metal box and walked it over to her, and Vellia glanced down at it, and quietly took it from my hands. "Thanks Caen."

I nodded as I went back to helping the shuttle co-pilot unload. These two were regulars to this compound and were already profusely apologizing for their tardiness.

"We got redirected over the capital, Primarch authorization and everything!" the pilot shouted from his seat at the front of the shuttle, as he was keeping the engines ready for a quick dust-off once we unloaded the cargo, "I'll be early next time!"

_Primarch authorization? What sort of shit is getting started now?_

"It's fine!" I shouted back, waving his concerns away, "At least you showed up at all!"

"Well, I can't let Blackwatch down now!" the pilot shouted back as the last of the cargo was unloaded, and the Kodiak disappeared back into the sky as quickly as it had arrived.

Most of the other crates had been stowed and secured away, leaving the last two for the intelligence building still sitting there. None of us really wanted anything to do with them since the Intelligence detachment at the Had didn't like us very much, and especially didn't like us handling any of their shit. Being fireteam leader, the responsibility of dealing with said Intelligence bullshit fell to me.

"Fine," I muttered under my breath.

"Long Eye this is Feral actual, over," I radioed as Lucus went back to his post with Pago tailing him to take my spot. Vellia stayed with me as I waited for a response.

"This is Long Eye," the drowsy voice of Colonel Silus Procso answered back, much to my annoyance, "Go ahead, over."

"I've got two containers worth of materials or whatever the fuck you guys ordered in out here. Where do you want it, over?"

"Watch your language, Captain."

_Of course. _

"Sure. Query is repeated, _sir,_ over."

"You can bring them into the secure room, Captain. Don't worry about protocol, over."

Vellia quickly glanced over to me once the good Colonel had finished his transmission. "Don't worry about protocol? Procso loves an opportunity to chew us up over protocol if we even touch the outside wall of the Spookhouse. Something's up."

"Yeah, first the shuttle pilots mentioning a Primarch redirect and then this. You hear that Lucus, Pago, over?"

"Affirmative Caen, we'll stay alert," Lucus radioed back, "We'll run a check of the perimeter defenses while you guys head in. Should I alert the gunship crew, over?"

"I don't think it would hurt, have them ready to dust off for recon in a little bit. If it's nothing we can just hit the hay and not worry about it, over."

"Wilco, out."

_It's nice to have squad-mates who don't bullshit you. _

I heaved one of the containers up onto my shoulder as Vellia picked up the other and we headed inside, with some of the Intel staff swiping us through the security doors deeper down into the bunker that was the "Spookhouse". Most of the time, none of us were allowed to enter the secure room or the observation rooms. I was sometimes allowed to enter when I was receiving fresh intel for ground recon missions we would occasionally run to make sure the Facinus group didn't have a chance to resurface. In order for me to do so, I wasn't allowed to have my combat gear or any sort of transmitting equipment inside. I usually bickered enough to get the assholes to allow me to wear my omni-tool. I wasn't recording any of what went on or collecting blackmail material. I didn't care anywhere near enough to do anything of that sort.

This precedent made the total waive off of protocol a bit peculiar. And as Vellia and I advanced further underground into the Spookhouse, we immediately saw why. Most of the Intel officers were rushing around the building and scurrying in a frenzy between rooms. A few snippets I picked up in passing was something about Batarian space being FUBAR.

When we reached the secure room, not only was I greeted by the dark brown face and black eyes of Colonel Silus Prosco, but also five of the most senior Intel officers on the base. After we deposited our containers on the large metal table in the center of the room, one of the other Intel officers secured the room and Prosco quickly unlocked the containers with a few inputs on his omni-tool.

Mostly the contents seemed to be data-pads along with data drives to hook into the secure terminals in the room. As everyone proceeded to ignore us in carrying out their work, I looked over to Vellia who gave me a shrug as she crossed her arms and glared around the room.

"Uhh, Colonel," I coughed out, which made every single Intel officer glare up at me, "What's the situation here?"

Prosco looked over towards his subordinate and sighed, pushing himself up off the table away from the data-pad he had been looking at intently. Both Vellia and I still had our helmets on, but it felt like Prosco's gaze was physically piercing through my visor. "All of Batarian space has gone dark."

"I find that hard to believe," I replied, crossing my arms, "The Batarians are loud fuckers. I doubt they'd have just disappeared off the face of the galaxy without a fight."

"That appears to be exactly what happened, Captain."

My gut dropped.

_The Batarians, just pushed aside like a decaying corpse? Spirits…whatever this is…we probably don't stand a damn chance._

"So, Colonel, I assume this is related to the business with the Primarch?" I managed to ask, after getting my bowels back into their correct places.

"That's…correct, Captain. We have reason to believe whatever the source of this outage is, it may eventually spread out far beyond Batarian space. Possibly even here."

"And what exactly might 'it' be, sir?"

"We're not sure at all right now, Captain. When we know, you'll be briefed, as will the rest of your team."

"Well, if we have a hunch that this 'thing' is coming our way, we might want to get the hell out of here sooner rather than later, sir."

"We'll make that decision when it needs to be made, Captain."

"Sure, sir, but we have a tiny fucking dedicated defense contingent here. We won't be able to hold out against any sort of major force, especially if a bulk portion of whatever took out Batarian space comes this way. Not to mention if any troublemakers on Taetrus knows about what's going on and decides to use this chaos to their advantage."

Prosco glared towards me, not angrily, but for the first time, in a seemingly sympathetic way. "We can't just drop everything and run. We'd need to run a base destruction protocol, and that would take up time," he sighed, glaring back at the datapad, which appeared to become less attractive to him the more the Colonel looked at it, "Get the gunship up and prep the defenses. Whatever you want that we have on site, set it up. If we learn anything soon, I'll let you know right away. You two are dismissed."

Vellia and I saluted and we sprinted out immediately after, as one of the officers let us out of the secure room and closed the door behind us.

"Well Vellia, looks like we may get to fight again on Taetrian soil."

"Doesn't sound like Facinus, but I'll take anything at this point."

"Don't let revenge cloud your head, Vellia. If we're hit, clear minds are the only path to survival, are we clear?"

"Affirmative. What's next?"

"I think it's time we broke out the big guns."

* * *

The Had was organized in a semi-circle fashion. The primary ground entrance to the base, which Lucus and I had been guarding earlier, was at a direct 90 degree angle due south from the Spookhouse which served as the center and primary command hub of the base. The landing pads were directly in front of the Spookhouse, and most of the crew quarters were dispersed around the complex in a fairly orderly fashion, as well as it could be done with pre-fab buildings and limited personnel.

Defensive positions were primarily stationed on the walls running the circumference of the semi-circle, which were just thick metal plates with scaffoldings behind them so we could shoot above them. This base was hardly prepared for a serious attack. Along the diameter, behind the Spookhouse, was a sheer drop protected by a small rocky outcropping that ran most of the length behind the Spookhouse and to the walls. We weren't too worried about a force trying to move anything up that way, but the rock wall was mined with small explosives, nothing big enough to break the ground up enough to cause a landslide and destroy the complex.

The closest settlement outside the base was a good twenty klicks from our base, and had maybe 50-60 colonists there. Vallum, the capital was four times the distance, and we could, on clear nights, see some of the lights and contrails of ships coming and going. Spaedar spaceport was to the distant northwest, and the ruins of Kasatum were directly east of our position on the edges of the Wildlands. The vantage point was nice, but if an enemy found us out, and it wasn't hard with all the antennas and receiving equipment we had poking up into the sky, we'd be a prime target of artillery and indirect fire.

But at least we weren't down in the valley. It could always be worse.

We waited until we got an all-clear that all personnel had safely recalled into the Had to start our recon in force.

The gunship, a Mantis-type, quickly took off and began a combat air patrol circle with a radius of about 5 klicks. It was mainly precautionary, and they were hardly expected to make contact with the enemy at this point. I commanded the remaining on station ground crews to help us set up two raised hard points behind the wall to mount stationary machine gun turrets on the pre-fab buildings closest by. I had little faith in the scaffolds in holding up under prolonged opposing fire. We had the Kodiak shuttle ferrying pieces and parts to the crews on top of the buildings, while I met up with my team to start planning out our defense pattern. Of course, we had no idea when or even if we were going to have contact, but it was better to have some sort of reaction plan than just blindly smashing into the enemy. All four of us had experienced the pain of poor battle plans and commanders who were too eager to get missions accomplished.

Vellia had suffered the worst consequences of such neglect. She had been part of a biotic cabal during the War on Taetrus, and while she raced back to our lines to report on her unit's deteriorating situation due to downed comms and incorrect assumptions on the placement of enemy fortifications, her unit was wiped out to the last soldier. By the time she had gotten reinforcements and returned to her team's last location, there were only corpses and craters left. She sought a transfer immediately after, and ended up with Blackwatch due to her abilities and combat records. In truth, back when the base was fully staffed, Vellia had been sent to fulfill the more antiquated role of an embedded observer, making sure none of us were making friendly with underground Facinus units. This move ruffled some feathers for sure, but Vellia had "asked" (interrogated is closer to the truth) me from the first day she had arrived to help her with her task, and I tried. I wasn't exactly the subtlest type, so she asked me to help keep watch on people. Of course, she had fairly high authority to do so, apparently Palaven's Primarch had green-lit the reactivation of such a program after the debacle of the war.

As for Pago, he hadn't been subject to very much incompetence at all, due to his role as a support gunner for an infiltrator team of Blackwatch. He didn't talk about it much at all, but Pago had been on the mission to Kasatum Fortress to find out if the Facinus remnants really had hostages with them or not. From the snippets he had given me over time, I learned that the team was given a liberal ability to hand wave away several individuals who appeared to be hostages, by recording audio and conversations, and could eventually be "deduced" to not be hostages at all. Taetrus had been Pago's home for a long time, and when the order came down to bomb Kasatum, he was fairly upset. Command wanted the war over, due to the constant bad press and the high-profile deaths of journalists detained by Hierarchy colonial forces, so ignoring a few hostages was easy enough for them to overlook. I met Pago not long after that happened, when he got posted to the Had, and he had recused himself from any sort of activity besides required operations and work dictated by command. Pago had opened up significantly since then, and became good friends with the rest of us that were stuck here.

Lucus and I had been partners in Blackwatch from our first touchdown in the Wildlands. We were a part of what the Hierarchy dubbed "Dagger Teams". To keep it simple, we were one of several QRFs, or quick reaction forces, that would help stabilize our lines against sudden counter-attacks or ambushes. But it didn't take very long for our teams to become what we called "Battle Bandages", where poor tactical decisions could essentially be bailed out if they threw one of the Dagger teams at the problem. In previous conflicts before Taetrus which I had been in, Dagger teams had been used sparingly and hesitantly. Throwing one of the teams haphazardly into a firefight could be dangerous for both the encumbered friendly force and the Dagger team.

But that changed on Taetrus.

We were used with growing and alarming frequency. We got about three calls every two days to carry out an assisting operation. As they reached more populated centers and the defense thickened, the offensive turned into a bloodbath. Facinus had planned fairly well for their war, and had taken over renovated areas which had been strategically hardened during a prior civil war on the planet. Lucus and I persevered as best we could. Despite easily gaining air superiority, the Hierarchy wasn't quite ready for an enemy that knew its tactics and how it fought. Even though Facinus didn't have a realistic chance of victory, they were going to bleed the Hierarchy, soldier by soldier. If the galactic press had seen the full scale of the devastation, there would have been mass opposition by other races, and Facinus might have been able to get the Hierarchy to come to the bargaining table.

The Hierarchy, however, managed to keep the lid on the situation.

Non-professional resistance eventually dwindled drastically once large population centers were taken. The constant air campaign and the work of the Hastatim quickly made citizens realize how bad the situation had become.

Later in the war, my unit was rotated out of the frontlines, after my commander, Captain Numidis, was killed by an anti-personnel mine not far from Kasatum. This was when Lucus and I were sent to FOB Hadrius.

As a result of all our collective experiences in combat, the defense plan focused on one primary goal.

"We have to keep the opposing forces outside the walls," Pago mused as he glared down at a holographic map of the Had compound in our team room, and typed away at his omni-tool which placed simulated OpFor on the display, "If they break in, the only dedicated hard-point with enough strength to hold for any period of time is the Spookhouse. And to be perfectly honest, once you go in there, you're not coming out. A smart opponent would block us in, suffocate, burn, or just blow us up like what happened at Kasatum."

"I agree," Vellia responded, looking out the window into the darkness of the early morning twilight, "I'd say we mine the incline approach to the base with what we have and try to funnel the OpFor into dedicated killing zones. And this isn't even factoring in how long we'll have air cover. If we lose that, the fight becomes a lot harder. But the even greater what if is…"

"Whether whatever this is brings in close air support," I finished Vellia's sentence grimly, as the map now displayed hostiles in every dimension.

"Do we even have enough ammunition here?" Lucus opined, as he looked back up to me.

"I doubt it," I responded as I looked to Pago, "We can maybe maintain continuous fire with our fixed guns for a few hours, but not much longer."

"Correct," Pago retorted as he highlighted our makeshift defensive positions on top of the houses, "We're going to have to lean on the gunship and our small arms a lot more than I'd like. If whatever hit the Batarians hits us, there's no way we're getting any support besides what's here. Do we know when base destruction protocol will be done?"

"They haven't even started yet. Prosco won't do it until the base gets hit. 'Information is too valuable' and other bullshit," I sighed, as I rubbed the top of my helmet at another developing itch, "Basically it looks like this is a 'Going down with the ship' moment. Unless we survive past completion of destruction protocol. That's the best we can hope for."

"And that assumes we still have shuttles and a way to break out of Taetrian space," Vellia added, as the map zoomed out to a simulated blockade, "I've ran some numbers. The size of a fleet that could just silence Batarian space easily numbers in the high single digits of thousands of ships in conservative estimates, and at the worst, probably nears closer to the high teens of thousands of individual ships. Even if it's not a full detachment that's sent after us, it's going to be hard work trying to break a blockade as big as that."

"I assume the brass is all talking to each other on comms," Lucus said as he loaded a combat bandolier onto his armor, "They have to have an idea on where this thing is tracking right now."

"I've tried asking, Lucus. They've given me no answer," I snapped back, half-heartedly. The mental strain was already starting.

"No worries then, Caen."

"Yeah, in that department at least," Vellia chuckled as our attention turned back to the map of the base.

We all were silent as we studied the surroundings and our positions. Besides our entrenched positions on the buildings, we followed standard Turian protocol for our retreat plan, 20 meter distances between fall-back points, staggered with remote explosives and other surprises in between. We barely had enough supplies to do the job. After a few more minutes of formalizing things, we had a basic plan in hand, ready to go. I forwarded a copy over to Colonel Prosco who simply gave a text response of "Acknowledged".

Now it was time to wait and see if this whole thing would blow over.

"Fucking hell," Lucus whistled, "Let's hope this is just the Spirits screwing with us."

"Alright everyone, keep your communications simple and clear, I don't want it turning into a shit-show if we make contact," I ordered as we gathered all of our combat gear and got ready to head to our respective positions.

After I received three quiet nods in return, we headed back outside into the dark.

Not a moment after we walked out of the team building, we finally got the answer back from Colonel Prosco we didn't want to hear.

"Unknown forces from Batarian space are inbound for Taetrus and the Mactare System, assume hostility and prepare for contact."

_Well. It sure can't get worse._


	2. Contact!

**AN/: Hi everyone! Back with Chapter 2 and the escalation of open hostilities. Enjoy.**

* * *

**Chapter 2: Contact!**

For those who wish to understand war, one must understand the constant shifting between two types of power.

Perceived power and actual power.

Strife and conflict often is based upon the discrepancies between the perceived and actual levels of power of a certain party. And in order to rectify the differences, war springs out of the ground as the natural machination to tip the scales in the direction of the actual reality of power.

In truth, this observation is not a new one. But, to understand the Reaper War in particular, one must familiarize themselves with these constant changes between perceived and actual power, between the galaxy's races, and to some extent, the Reapers themselves.

Prior to 2186 and full contact with the Reapers, the gap between the actual and perceived powers of the Reapers was enormous. Save for a select few, the vast majority believed Sovereign's threat and Saren's actions were a statistical outlier. Information was spread that Sovereign itself was a Geth creation, not a Reaper in and of itself. When all that happened, I was unsure of what to think.

Based on the little knowledge I had of the Geth, even I knew deep down that Sovereign was different. Something was constantly bugging me about it, and when more and more of Commander Shepard's exploits came to light following Saren's, and later, the Collectors' defeats, the threat seemed more and more dangerous to some. I had a nagging feeling that someday the reckoning would come, and the actual power of the Reapers would rip things harshly back to where they "needed" to be.

Besides concerned individuals however, the Turian Hierarchy downplayed the Reapers significantly. We were officially ordered not to speak of the topic on-duty. And naturally, as always with gag orders, it meant we all increasingly talked about the subject behind closed doors. Blackwatch itself was not immune to the topic, as rumors spread that Saren Arterius himself had been a part of the unit, despite the claim being totally false (since the timeline of his service record did not allow him to have served in the regiment before joining the Council Spectres at such a young age). Even in our small unit, worries about the Reapers spread like wildfire. We all were concerned about what we were going to do to prepare. And more often than not, due to the restrictions, we could do very, very little.

And again, looking to the balance of perceived and actual power provides more answers as to why the collective controlling elements of the Galaxy's races acted in this manner.

For the most part, the perceived and actual powers of the Galaxy's main races were both fairly well aligned. Especially for the Turians. The Turians were widely considered the strongest and most dangerous military force in the galaxy. And for good reason. The display on Taetrus had thrown fresh eyes on our capabilities in combat against people who even understood our tactics and ways, and we still annihilated those who openly resisted to almost the last man. The Asari, Salarians, Krogans, and even Humans were all flexing their muscles throughout galactic space along with the Turians.

The egos were inflating.

And as a result, their perceived powers dwarfed and diminished any possible challenge by a conventional, domestic force. But, as we survivors know, the Reapers were no conventional force.

If you are reading this and have no understanding of how the Reapers fought, let me explain briefly then, how they did.

The Reapers did not fuck around.

They did not delay. They did not debate strategy. They did not hesitate. They engaged in combat with massive amounts of forces and combat power, utilized for a singular motive.

Conquest at any cost.

Anything and everyone were utilized and harvested to fulfill that goal. Nothing was safe.

Of course, this meant that the Reapers' actual power was immense. There were no shackles on their behaviors, no allies to sate, no global press to appease, no laws to follow. They simply broke the door down and then dropped fission bombs down your throat without pause. They did this to everyone, knocking planets down one by one until entire systems vanished, tumbling down together into heaps of rubble.

Even in the beginning, the galaxy's races thought conventional tactics could defeat this threat. Surely, the technological innovations and shiny weapons could go through the Reapers without having a second thought about it.

Unfortunately, such thoughts led to the deaths of untold millions, and possibly even billions. The arrogance that was pervasive in the early stages of the war was frankly astounding.

And Taetrus…suffered the brunt of the wake-up call.

* * *

When we saw the sky start to burn in all the wrong places around sunrise, let's just say any hopes of not facing contact quickly perished along with the unfortunate ones blindsided in the dark expanse of space above Taetrus.

"You seeing what I'm seeing, Caen?" Lucus' voice crackled over the comms in my ear.

"Yeah."

"Is that the tenth fleet?"

"It _was."_

"Well, I guess that means my nights are booked for the foreseeable future," Lucus groaned as he hopped down off the machine gun nest on our building overlooking the front gate and the main approach to the Had. Vellia and Pago were on the largest building opposite of us on the other side of the main approach to the base, with a few of the other members of the ground crew.

The Mantis gunship had been active and mobile for several hours at this point. The gunship pilot barely said anything besides his mandatory comms check every five minutes. Everyone's anxieties were rising with the tenth fleet burning over our heads.

"Sorry about that, Lucus," I said back to the sniper as he loaded his Punisher rifle with a thermal clip, "I could call the mysterious space horde and tell them to stop for a little bit."

"Have you been talking to the Colonel again?"

"Fuck no," I responded tersely. We both chuckled for a moment after turning off our comms. But my laughter quickly dropped away. "We're probably going to fucking die here, Lucus."

"Well, it's not that bad of a shit-hole I guess," Lucus shrugged, "It could always be worse, you know. We could have been up there in the ships of the Tenth fleet and gotten vaporized. At least we may have the possibility of having a say about how we go down."

"Who knew that would be a luxury, eh?"

"The Spirits like fucking with things in that way, I guess," Lucus muttered, as he readjusted one of his chest bandolier rigs, "Every time this shit happens, I wonder why I volunteered for this job."

"We fight for those who cannot fight, so that tomorrow we all may have a chance at victory," both of us rattled off unemotionally. It was the slogan of the Blackwatch, drilled into all of us from the moment the selection process and special forces training began. We were the expendable maniac soldiers who would throw themselves into unbelievable chaos to keep our way of life alive.

Or at least in theory.

After a few moments of awkward silence, we both turned our radios back on, and the whole thing was filled with chatter. But a line came through the comms that sent everyone into total silence.

"Vallum has enemy contact," Colonel Prosco's voice cut through the air.

_Well, that's something. _

"Son of a bitch," Pago swore, "They're already there?!"

"What sort of enemy strength are they reporting?" I asked calmly, trying to push away the ominous dread that was falling over us.

"Exact numbers are unknown at this time, but estimates put them near five fleet strength at minimum," Prosco replied nonchalantly, "Ground forces seem to be relatively conventional, but ships have descended to the surface and are providing fire support that is overwhelmingly effective. Taetrus' Primarch is KIA. Chain of command is disintegrating fast."

"And what about the other cities?"

"Spaedar has only reported light contact, sacrificial scouts to probe their defenses most likely. We haven't picked up anything in this area yet. From what we've heard from the other side of the planet, a lot of our forces are in retreat."

"Fuuuuuuuck," Lucus groaned.

Prosco didn't even act like he had heard Lucus, "We've started base destruction protocol and sent out a distress signal to Palaven. It's been received, but we have no idea on how long a response will take to arrive. Most likely course of action is hold station for an extraction and hope whatever comes can get us back out of the system."

As much as I wanted to scream at the futility at the plan, I couldn't. We had to keep our heads on straight and hope a better option revealed itself.

"Feral lead copies all, Colonel. Feral team will hold and defend the FOB for as long as it takes."

"Roger, I'll keep you posted with updates on the ground situation. Hopefully we'll hear more details from Palaven soon. Over and out."

Everyone was silent for a few minutes as we mentally prepared ourselves for prolonged combat. No soldier really goes about it in the same way as the next. Lucus would always take a nap before any fight. Pago would read messages from home. Vellia would meditate.

As for myself, I would pipe music into my helmet from my omni-tool that I had downloaded from the extranet. It would be absolute garbage popular music, but it was enough to distract me and let me have a few moments to get my head clear. I'd also pace around like a maniac, which of course would typically annoy Lucus and prevent him from napping on occasion. But this time, Lucus was out cold in seconds.

"Is Lucus already asleep?" Vellia asked, and I looked over to her across the way while I paced around the rooftop of my building. She hadn't moved an inch from her meditative state, her head bowed down to the ground as she sat utterly motionless.

"Yeah, he's already pretty much comatose."

"Figures. That must be a record for him."

We ended up having about another hour or so of downtime.

_"__I'm just a teenage dirtbag, baby like you…" _my music faded away as I began to hear the faint popping of explosions in the far distance.

All of us on the rooftops snapped away from our inner voids as soon as we heard it.

"That's fucking close," Pago said as I could see him shoulder his Revenant and load it quickly, "We're gonna have contact soon."

"Lucus!" I shouted as I headed up to the mounted machine gun on our building.

"What do you need, boss?" he answered back without hesitation.

"Can you identify which direction that is?"

"On it, give me two minutes!"

"This is Feral lead to all units on station at the Had, proceed to combat stations, I repeat, all units proceed to combat stations, over and out."

Prosco responded to my message with another "Acknowledged" text response.

"It's the settlement," Lucus interjected, "I can't see any enemy air cover right now. Looks like it's just ground forces."

"Roger, looks like we don't have long. Delta 7, this is Feral lead, do you read?"

"Affirmative, Feral lead, this is Delta 7, go ahead, over," the Mantis gunship pilot punctually replied.

"Giving you a heads up, we have possible enemy ground forces at the settlement twenty klicks from our position, can you go out and give us an idea on how close they are from our position, over?"

"Roger, what's our rules of engagement, over?"

"Do not fire unless in danger. But I won't stop you if you deem it necessary. I can't guarantee we can pick you up if you go down that far out, so keep that in mind Delta 7. Beyond that, it's pretty much your discretion on the ROE, over."

"Roger, Feral lead, we're oscar-mike, out."

The Mantis broke off from its circling pattern at our 10 o'clock high and accelerated off towards the settlement at the Halen River in the Diluvian Wildlands.

"Looks like they're orbital dropping more units to their position, Caen," Lucus said as he turned his head back towards me, "Probably at least a couple hundred down there, probably more."

And the corroborating report was radioed in by the gunship crew not minutes later.

"Feral, this is Delta 7, we're over the settlement on the Halen River. The whole place is burned out; we've taken some ground fire but nothing very dangerous as of yet. A lot of the ground forces that attacked the village have taken off running in your direction. We attacked one of the orbital drop sites just to scatter them. Whatever these things are, they sure are fucking ugly, over."

"Roger Delta 7, nice work, you can head back this way, try and loop around from another direction so they don't just follow you straight back, over," I replied as I leaned forward up against the mounted machine gun.

"Wilco, Delta 7, out."

"Great. Just great." Lucus' mumble had snuck on to my comms.

"What's great?" I asked back.

"Wha…oh, I just realized something."

"And what's that?"

"We don't have a combat medic."

_Fuck._

"Well, we're all trained right? So don't sweat it," I added, trying to spin things at least in some positive direction.

"Yeah, well I sure hope Pago is not the one sealing up a sucking chest wound on me, I saw him during the medical test. Might as well have been butchering a Varren for a fucking steak. Just keep him away from me if I buy it, alright?"

I shook my head, "Roger that."

"Thanks, at least that's a bright spot of news for me….and don't tell him I said that."

"I won't."

After my short conversation with Lucus, everything was silent. The comms, the world around us, and everyone on base. It was almost as if Taetrus had ceased functioning entirely. Everything now waited on the arrival of the enemy.

Lucus had ghosted off to his sniper's perch on the building directly adjacent to my machine gun position at my 9 o'clock. He didn't like sitting next to the firing of heavier mounted weapons for sustained periods. Fucked with his head too much for his liking. Well, and there was the whole thing of the mounted guns being big, flashing, bright targets for the enemy to shoot at.

A fair concern.

"Possible contact, 1 o'clock from my position at five hundred meters, I've got brush moving, the thermal scope corroborates," Pago reported as I wheeled the turret with a loud 'ka-chunk' as it locked into position on the general area of the enemy sighting.

"Alright everyone, thermal check your weapons," I ordered.

I pulled out my Phaeston and checked the thermal clip, finding a fully-charged one in the weapon. I followed with a check of my Carnifex pistol, which I kept on a holster on my right hip.

"Feral 1-2 is Green," Lucus called.

"Feral 2-1 is Green," Pago radioed.

"Feral 2-2 is Green," Vellia responded, "Let's get this shit over with."

"Vell," I called back, "Take the right side of the zone of contact when they show up, don't waste our rounds shooting the same targets. We need to be as effective as possible."

"Wilco."

"Alright, stay frosty everyone."

After about half a minute we got a clear view of what later became officially dubbed in identification manuals as a "Cannibal". A twisted brown and red bipedal mass of flesh with bright blue fluorescent "eyes" and a gaping mouth. There must have been at least fifty of those things coming out of the brush towards the base.

"All Feral units, you are clear to engage as you see fit. Conserve your ammo and waste 'em," I growled as I cleared the bolt on my machine gun.

"You know Caen, I've been waiting all day for you to say that," Lucus chirped happily.

_POW!_

Lucus' Punisher discharged the first round of our war on Taetrus, and the round the rifle sent down range had good effect, quickly sending one of the ugly bastards down into the ground. It took maybe half a second for the Reaper forces to get their act together and start shooting back.

Vellia and I took this as our cue to open up with our machine guns, with Pago joining in the monstrous hail of fire with his Revenant. At this sort of range, I barely had to adjust the machine gun's targeting reticle to move between targets. Our tracers methodically snaked between the targets down range, scattering the numerous enemies back behind cover in the jungle away from the clearing that was the direct approach to the base. Despite their cover, we continued firing at the foreign blobs, using the penetrating power of our machine guns to shoot through the trees and into our targets. All the while, Lucus was methodically picking off any of the stupid ones that poked any body part out from behind their hiding places.

_CHA-CHUNK!_

A one-hundred round thermal clip for my turret was already expended, and another was loaded within fractions of a second. Time flies when you're burning ammo.

Only a few more seconds of sustained fire down into the kill-zone was required to disperse the first wave. The sounds of gunshots faded away as my machine gun's barrel hissed from the heat of combat.

"Guess we're in the war now, Captain," Vellia chuckled as I heard the signature sound effect of a machine gun loading a new thermal clip.

"Yeah, it seems we are. And with not too bad of a start. Did we get most of them, Lucus?"

"Affirmative, boss. I'd bet we hit at minimum ninety percent of them. Lots of bodies down there at the end of the clearing."

"What the fuck even are those things?" Vellia asked with a sigh, "Are those Reaper forces?"

"Only thing powerful enough to knock off Batarian space and turn around to invade our space in such a short window of time," I answered back. "Long Eye, Long Eye, this is Feral actual, over."

"Feral actual, this is Long Eye, send it, over."

"Have made contact with enemy ground forces, and have successfully turned back first attack. Will remain in position for expected counter-attacks in greater numbers, how copy?"

"Long Eye copies all, keep it up. We have news from Palaven, the combined fleets are going to attempt to break through the opposing forces through the mass relay at approximately 1700 local time. We have been advised to link up with their forces once they successfully break through the enemy blockade, over."

"Roger that. Have the enemies been ID'ed, over?"

"…."

"Sir?"

"Affirmative. It's the Reapers."

"Roger that, we'll stay in our defensive position, over and out."

Our fears had been confirmed and across the galaxy the Turian Hierarchy was taking a bite from the shit sandwich of ignoring the Reaper threat. Now, the Reapers were kicking their asses awake. Everyone seemed muted at that revelation.

Except Lucus.

"Uh, Caen?" Lucus called out from his sniper perch, "Isn't there a really big if in that whole plan? If the fleets can't break through the Reapers, we aren't getting out of the system. If they wiped out Batarian space, what makes them think we won't fall in a few hours _and _that the Reaper ships won't just stomp their precious fleets?"

"We all know that, Lucus. Right now, we just have to hope their plan works."

"Even if…"

"EVEN IF!" I shouted back, "Fucking watch your sector and quit worrying about things that are out of your control!"

"Alright, geez…" Lucus trailed off as he went back to watching the kill-zone through his scope.

As much as I loved Lucus like a brother, he sometimes just pissed me off with that motor-mouth of his. He had earned his fair share of trouble for his inability to keep it shut when necessary. Back during the War on Taetrus, Lucus and I had earned a two-day leave pass to Vallum to get some R&R before the final push in the Diluvian Wildlands. We happened to end up in a fairly nice bar, as one does, and of course, we ended up with a bunch of other military personnel talking shit about everything. Lucus naturally, as he does, went into this massive rant criticizing military doctrine in the war and how "fucking stupid these pencil-pushing assholes are that they can't seem to recognize the difference between moving figures on a map and actually moving through terrain facing enemy fire". Of course, due to our luck the Primarch of Taetrus was there.

And within a few moments of his outburst, Lucus found himself face-to-face with the Primarch, who was none too happy with his criticisms. Fortunately for all of us, the Primarch recognized we were all relatively hammered and out of it, so he let Lucus off with a warning, but forced us all to go home for the night. Lucus beamed about the whole thing afterwards and wore the staredown like a badge of honor. Lucus maintained that he won the "staring contest" with the Primarch and that's why he let Lucus off, but I hardly believed a lot of the shit that came out of his mouth.

That whole night I remember being terrified that the situation was going to get reported and I was ultimately going to end up facing the ramifications of letting my squad-mate run his big mouth off in front of the Primarch. But nothing ever came of it.

But even after it all, I couldn't stay mad at him for very long. After the Primarch incident, he saved my ass from a flanking Facinus fighter that had ambushed me from a rooftop in one of the villages by pushing me out of the way and then dropping the offender with a single shot to the head.

That level of ability made it easier to put up with the bullshit in between.

"I'm picking up movement again," Lucus radioed, "five hundred meters…shit. They're spreading out big-time now, covering a lot of the ground outside the kill-zone. This is not good."

"I'm left of twelve, Vell, you stay right! Pago, you keep up the fire where we can't!" I ordered as I swiveled my gun back towards the left side of the kill-zone, "You're free to engage as soon as you have a visual!"

"Roger!" both Vellia and Pago responded as we readied ourselves for another round of fighting.

_Here we go again._

This time the enemy attack was much more coordinated. Instead of running at the first salvo of our defensive fire, the walking monsters accepted losses and kept working their way up across the kill zone towards the Had. And to make things worse, their counter-fire was fairly accurate.

Rounds were streaking over my head and occasionally one would strike the protective shield of my mounted gun as I kept laying suppressive fire on the enemy targets, constantly loading fresh hundred round thermal clips. Now the enemy had real strength. I kept rotating the machine gun constantly, letting off ten round bursts towards clusters of enemies, mowing the blobs down into the dirt and sending others diving for cover, and often into our land mines.

With one group that I opened fire on towards my 10 o'clock in the kill zone, one of the monsters deflected a round down into the ground, directly onto a land mine, setting off the explosive and sending up a towering fireball that left a smoldering crater in the place of several enemies. I quickly acquired a new group of targets and kept up my fire, as Lucus' precise sniper fire continued to methodically drop enemies all across the kill zone approximately one per second.

Even though we seemed to be holding out decently, I figured some extra firepower would help make things a little more . . . unfair.

"Delta 7, Delta 7, this is Feral actual, over."

"This is Delta 7, send it Feral."

"I'm requesting immediate fire support on the approach to the base, on a hundred plus foot mobiles, danger close, over."

"Roger, we are inbound for fire support, danger close, ETA two (Earth) minutes, watch your heads, out."

I turned my attention back to laying down fire on the kill zone, back to the seemingly mind-numbing task of disintegrating walking hunks of ugly flesh with a heavy machine gun. After what only felt like a few seconds, my omni-tool started flashing rapidly.

_Gunship is almost here._

"Cover, cover, danger close fire mission is inbound!" I radioed as I crouched behind my machine gun and poked my helmeted head around the gun shield to get a peek at the destruction.

"Guns, guns, guns," Delta 7's gunner exclaimed calmly.

The Mantis gunship came screaming down from the sky from our 2 o'clock, and already we could all hear the characteristic "BRRRRRRRT" of the main guns firing, which disintegrated whole groups of the Cannibals within fractions of a second. Delta 7 continued its attack run by firing a high-explosive missile back towards the edge of the clearing in the jungle, creating a massive explosion, and sending more than a few bodies tumbling out into a motionless heap in the kill zone.

"Hell yeah, fuck them up!" Pago exclaimed over the comms, with a shake of his fist.

A sigh which sounded like it belonged to Vellia snuck onto the radio, and I glanced over to her position, where she seemed disinterested in the whole thing. She barely whispered out over the comms, "I swear, he's still a twelve-year-old child."

"This is Delta 7, first fire mission is complete. I'm going to circle around and finish off the stragglers, over."

"Roger Delta 7," I responded, "Keep up the good work."

"We'll certainly try, Feral," the Mantis pilot chuckled back.

"Is this really all they have?" Lucus asked, and I could almost see his brain twisting inside his head as he looked back towards me from his perch, "If we can just sit here and waste these guys, why the hell is half the planet in retreat right now?"

A deafening roar filled the air, and we all frantically searched for the source, and the thing itself seemed to be a literal answering of Lucus' question.

A massive winged creature which looked to be of some similar origin to the Cannibals we had been wasting flew over us, knocking up a big cloud of dust. The monster landed in the middle of the clearing, and we didn't hesitate in returning fire. My mind eventually pieced together that this…thing was a re-engineered version of the Harvester creatures on Tarith, the "worm-necks" that were rightly feared by many who had to operate anywhere near their territory.

And this fucking abomination had mounted cannons.

"By the fucking Spirits," Lucus growled, as he crawled back from his position towards the rear of his building's roof, "Why do they have a goddamn sense of humor?"

The Harvester now turned its attention to Vellia's position, hammering her mounted gun with fire as she desperately tried to keep up her gun's fire.

"I'm fucking close to getting wasted here, guys!" the Cabal yelled as she desperately loaded another thermal clip into her machine gun.

"This is Delta 7, we are engaging."

"Thank the fucking Spirits for that!" Pago yelled.

But our relief was fairly short lived.

No sooner had the gunship bared down on the Harvester, when the winged monstrosity reared up and clasped onto the gunship with its legs and mouth, and threw the Mantis down into the ground like it was a child's toy.

"Well, we're fucked," Lucus remarked coldly, his confidence from before totally absent from his voice.

"Shut up and fire back! Vellia, do you have the Cobra launchers?!" I screamed out.

"Affirmative!"

"Then fucking use them!"

"Wilco!"

"Lucus take the machine gun!"

"Wait, what?" the sniper asked confused, "Are you doing what I think you are?"

"You better fucking believe it," I replied as I took out my Phaeston, "Cover my ass!"

"Damn it, Caen!"

I took off sprinting and leaped off the front of my building, over the walls and barricade into the kill-zone. As soon as I landed, with my jump packs dampening my fall, an explosion rocked the head of the Harvester, presumably from the launch of one of Vellia's Cobra missiles. I glared down towards the downed Mantis.

_Now or never…_

"Delta 7, this is Feral actual, I'm inbound to help you get out of there, hold on guys, over."

I took off sprinting down the approach to the base, concentrating on every step so that I didn't fall over. Tracer rounds and rocket fire kept impacting into the Harvester, staggering it back a few precious steps away from the downed gunship. I didn't dare fire at the Harvester out of fear of attracting its wrath at such a close range. After a few more seconds of running and fire from my team, the Harvester reared again and let out an ear-shattering roar, and then, inexplicably, the creature exploded in a bright blue flash, almost directly in front of me.

The shockwave and concussion of the blast, sent me flying onto my back into the ground with a pretty hard force. Luckily, it didn't do much beyond wind me a little bit.

"Caen! You alright down there?" a muffled voice called out.

"Yeah, yeah," I coughed as I slowly pushed myself up, and checked my Phaeston to see if it was still operational, "I'm going to get those guys out of there."

"Roger, we have you covered."

I took my time walking over to the Mantis, after confirming my rifle was working. I raised it up to my shoulder as I scanned the tree line towards the edge of the kill zone, and quickly I picked up several targets.

"Contact front, more of the smaller ugly fuckers," I called as I reached the gunship and put myself in cover behind the fuselage of the downed gunship, "I'm probably going to need the help of one of you guys down here, over."

"I'm inbound," Vellia answered instantly.

I rotated out of cover and shouldered my Phaeston. I let my eyes naturally take me towards the flashes of the enemies' weapons, and let the subconscious part of my brain take over. All the years of training and combat made this process automatic. Short, but effective, burst fire on each flash I saw, and I kept moving between targets, one-by-one. A burst, then another, and then one more until the flash stopped. Then to the next target. My shoulder buffered the automatic fire from the Phaeston with ease.

I was one with my rifle. Then Vellia showed up.

"At your six," Vellia said as I heard a dull 'THUD' on the fuselage of the Mantis behind me, "Ready for tasking."

"Check the cockpit and see who's alive, and if we can get them out of there."

"On it."

My eyes were still on the enemies. One of the Cannibals came out from the clearing and charged towards me, directly at my twelve. I took a few steps out to the right, forcing him to turn his fire, and in its moment of adjustment, I let out a long two second burst right at the bastard's head, turning it into a pile of goo and sending its body quickly down to the ground. I reached into my belt and grabbed a grenade and with a yell of "Frag out!", I lobbed the metal ball down towards the flashes in the tree line.

I hurried back behind the cover of the downed gunship when I felt the blast of the grenade going off.

"How are the crew, Vellia? Talk to me!"

"Not great, but alive," Vellia replied, "They both need a CASEVAC."

"And there's probably no way we can give them one now, but I'll ring 'em up."

"This sucks, Caen."

"Yeah…I know. Long Eye, Long Eye, this is Feral actual, over."

"This is Long Eye, go ahead, over."

"Delta 7 has been brought down in the kill zone, the pilot and co-pilot are alive, but in need of immediate medical attention. Requesting immediate CASEVAC at our position, over."

"Negative Feral, we can not get you a CASEVAC shuttle. We have been unable to raise any forces planet-side, out."

"Roger. Pago!"

"Sir!"

"Get some of the ground crew and see if you can get the shuttle and land out here so we can move these two guys out of here, I'm not leaving them in the kill zone, over."

"Roger that, I'll get some guys together, out."

"Lucus, stay frosty on the machine gun, alright?"

"Yeah, roger that," Lucus replied, sounding slightly defeated that he had ended up with the boring job.

I looked back to the tree-line and noticed that the enemy threat had been eliminated for the time being.

"Captain," Vellia said as she tapped me on my shoulder, "Permission to go hunting. I'll make sure the area around the kill zone is clear. I'll keep you updated on what I see."

Hunting, or "offensive recon", was Vellia's specialty and given the opportunity, it was nearly impossible to not let her loose.

"Alright, but be careful. We have no backup."

"And no CASEVACs either," Vellia chuckled as she disappeared in a flash, her biotic abilities now unleashed.

With Vellia gone, I jogged over to the cockpit of the Mantis to find the pilot and co-pilot relatively stabilized. The pilot seemed to be the better off one of the two, while the co-pilot had suffered the brunt of the impact, and badly wounded legs.

"You guys alright in there?"

"Yeah," the pilot coughed, "Your team-mate took care of us. First time I can remember that a LT has taken care of a flight sergeant."

"Well, we're not quite the usual ground pounders, I'm afraid."

"No kidding," the co-pilot grimaced as he tried to move his bad left leg, "You guys took down that fucked up flying demon thing like it was nothing after it swatted us down like a tiny bug."

"Just trying to get you guys home."

"Heh, after all this, that'd sure be nice."

I nodded as the air began to swirl at the approach of a landing Kodiak shuttle, "Well, hang on just a few more moments and we'll have you out of there."

Pago hurried over with one of the ground crew once the shuttle had touched down and lifted out the pilot, draping the wounded Turian's arms around their shoulders and carrying him into the Kodiak. Another one of the ground crew came out of the shuttle to help me in getting the co-pilot out, which we tried to do as gingerly as possible, as his left leg was pretty bruised and bloody. Draping one of his arms around my shoulder, the ground crew member and I briskly carried the co-pilot into the shuttle and within about thirty seconds we had both of Delta 7's crew down on stretchers.

"Looks like we're going to have a change in plans, eh Caen?" Pago called as the shuttle dusted off from the kill-zone.

"More like a total rewrite."

"Feral actual, this is Feral 2-2."

_Vell._

"Go ahead 2-2."

"I'm not finding anything else out here. We must have eliminated the whole main force that was sent this way from the Halen River, over."

"Roger, go ahead and RTB, 2-2. We need to figure out a better plan to get everybody off planet, especially our casualties, do you copy?"

"2-2 copies, loud and clear. I'm on my way, over and out."

_Hell of a way to start a war._

* * *

**AN/: So there we have it. Next time, things are going to get a lot more chaotic and confused for Caen and the gang. Anyways, please do not hesitate to let me know what you guys think of the story so far. I'd really appreciate your guys' opinions rather than assuming what you think.**

**Esquire 6.**


	3. On the Brink

**AN/: Back again with a new chapter! It's one of the longest chapters I've ever written, but it concludes Feral team's time on Taetrus. Enjoy.**

* * *

_**"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent." - General Douglas MacArthur**_

* * *

**Chapter 3: On the Brink**

After a very short hop back to the Had, things quieted down a little bit. Lucus continued his over-watch on the approach to the base and couldn't find anything trying to attack us again. Successfully repelling two waves of the Reapers did raise our spirits slightly, but the lingering dread of even more dangerous enemies kept us on our toes.

I went back up to my rooftop machine gun position mainly to make sure Lucus wasn't alone in his thankless task. Vellia, once she returned from her "hunting" mission busied herself with taking care of the crew of Delta 7. Pago returned alone to the other machine gun post and quietly took up the work of repairing the badly beaten emplaced weapon.

We found ourselves still waiting for the "reinforcements" from the Hierarchy. Even though according to Colonel Prosco we still had sporadic contact with Spaedar Spaceport, he wouldn't allow a two-man team to take the casualties on the shuttle to at least try and get the wounded crew off-planet. I understood that it would weaken the defense detachment, but it wasn't as if we would be able to really do anything if we got hit with orbital or close-range strikes from the primary Reaper ships.

Lucus' worries from earlier were burrowing deeper into my mind, sowing doubts I didn't really want to think about, but I couldn't help but consider about the reality of our situation. There was a breaking point where Prosco's stubbornness would kill everyone in that bunker whether he wanted to believe it or not. But rebelling against the order now wouldn't make things any better.

I sighed, glaring back out to the scorched and burnt earth from the firefight. The smoldering wreckage of the Mantis gunship protruded out as the sole obstacle in the kill-zone, and beyond that the shattered and fallen trees around the edge of the clearing were the only reminders of the carnage so far.

"You thinking too much again, brother?" Lucus muttered, lying prone as he continued glaring down the scope of his Punisher rifle.

"That's one way of putting it," I replied as I removed an empty thermal clip from the mounted machine gun, noticing that we only had two fully-charged clips for the weapon left on the building.

"Sometimes, I just don't even know what to think anymore," Lucus grunted as he lifted himself up and took off his helmet, taking a quick swig from his canteen, "What's it really worth to protect this metal eye-sore from a demon space-horde that probably doesn't give a shit about any of the stuff we are supposedly 'safe-guarding' from the enemy by destroying it?"

"I don't know," I grumbled, with my attempts to stay neutral beginning to fail, "That pilot and gunner are going to get a lot worse if we can't get them to an actual hospital."

"But the mission!" Lucus sarcastically shot back, "We have the mission! We can't let our causalities seduce us to abandon our duty to this wasteland! We can't let these useless rocks and dirt fall into the hands of the enemy, sir!"

All I could do was chuckle at Lucus. "How the hell did you get past the selection board, Lucus? You must be the most insubordinate Turian in the history of the Hierarchy."

Lucus shrugged back as he put his combat helmet on, "I ask myself that question all the time. I like to think about that instead of our current wonderful assignment."

I was only able to enjoy a few seconds of silence when the worried voice of Pago came across the radio.

"Uh, Caen? We may have a problem."

"What is it?"

"Look up."

I did, and immediately my eyes widened at what I saw.

It was a massive fireball descending from the outer atmosphere down towards us, and the fireball appeared to be on a direct collision trajectory with the base, or at best very close to it. I had a hunch that this was the Reapers finally getting their act together and playing hardball.

And it was exactly the trump card I needed to get Prosco to the table.

"Long Eye, this is Feral lead, we have a massive object moving in on direct collision trajectory with the Had, appears to be a Reaper capital ship coming in to provide close fire support, requesting permission to begin exfil, over."

"Negative, Feral, hold station."

"Damn it, sir, we are fucking _dead_ if we stay here, I request permission again for an immediate exfil."

"Watch your mouth Captain, your team is not going anywhere until friendly forces arrive to extract us."

"They aren't getting here!" I screamed back, "We are going to get destroyed in a few minutes! You and your precious information will be buried under a pile of rubble and none of this will matter. We need to move _now_, sir. The time to sit on our hands has long gone."

"You will— "

"I've heard enough of that," I growled as I cut off my radio.

"Way to stand up for yourself, Caen," Lucus said as he gave me a thumbs up from his position, "Are we leaving?"

"Affirmative, pack your gear and let's get the crew to Spaedar and see what we can do."

"Rog-" Lucus attempted to get out before he was cut off by a deafening explosion as the glowing fireball faded into the dark purple outline of a gigantic Reaper capital ship, which smashed into the forest just outside the cleared approach to the Had, sending trees tumbling and bursting in all directions. The ground shook as the Reaper ship used its . . . legs to re-orient itself towards the direction of the Had.

"Oh, _fuck_." Pago, in two short words, summarized all of our thoughts at once.

"Get off the buildings, move, move!" I shouted. I broke into a sprint and leaped off the building, out of the line of sight of the ship and away from the Spookhouse, hoping that concrete eyesore would be its only target. "Vellia, get away from the shuttle pads, we have ordinance incoming!"

"What about the crew? They can't move, Caen!"

"Damn it, I'm not losing any of you over this! Get out of there!"

". . . Roger."

A deafening roar came from the Reaper ship, guttural and electronic at the same time. The mid-section of the legged-monstrosity opened to reveal a massive hole which quickly illuminated a bright red color. Not a few moments later, a large beam quickly shot out in a straight line, cutting a massive swath through the main gate, down across the shuttle pads and directly onto the Spookhouse. I had buried myself behind a fortified position at about 10 o'clock on the half circle from the Spookhouse about half way between the main wall and the Spookhouse bunker. I still got thrown by the shockwave from there.

The giant laser absolutely ruptured the entire bunker structure, sending concrete and metal flying everywhere, and the communications antennas toppled along with it. I was tossed a good two or three meters away from my position and I landed awkwardly, shattering the visor of my helmet on a large rock embedded in the ground. The glass of the helmet cut into the bridge of my nose and I quickly felt warm blood running across my face as I pushed myself up back off the ground. But before I had a chance to do anything, another blast rocked through the building next to me, and everything went dark.

* * *

When I came to, everything was still pitch black. I tried moving my arms and legs only to get a lot of resistance from what felt like rubble holding me in. I strained hard in an attempt to open my eyes but nothing happened.

My mind immediately began to panic.

_Am I blind? Oh fuck, I am blind! The blast and shrapnel flying around everywhere must have hit me bad. I'm going to die here blind and helpless . . . shit, shit, shit._

In a reflex, I just began yelling and screaming, straining my trapped arms and legs to try and break myself out from wherever I was. A few minutes later, I started hearing a voice and footsteps getting closer.

And after a few more excruciating seconds, I could finally make out the voice.

"Caen? Caen? Is that you?" the voice, which sounded like Lucus, called from my left side.

_Thank the fucking spirits._

"Yeah, damn it, it's me!" I yelled back, "I'm trapped and I think I'm fucking blind!"

"Alright, alright!" Lucus grunted back, as the sounds of moving rubble filled my ears, "Just hang on a second there, let's get you out and see what's wrong with you. Vell, Pago, I found him over on the left side of the Had under some wreckage."

"You should've seen me, Lucus, I face-planted into a rock and shattered my helmet visor when the first blast hit."

"Really?"

"Yeah, definitely not my proudest moment."

"At least you're alive, buddy. Just hang on for one more moment, I've almost got ya."

Finally, the pressure on my body lifted as a loud crash of metal sounded not far away from my head. I felt Lucus pull me up off my stomach, grab me from under my arms, and drag me a few meters over towards what I assumed was open space closer to the Spookhouse. Or whatever was left of it.

"Alright Caen, let's take a look at you," Lucus said quietly, as he sat me up.

I grimaced as daggers of pain shot through my back. "That doesn't feel good," I grunted as I steadied myself with my hands, still struggling to orient myself in my pitch-black world.

"Well, Caen, you do have a lot of blood on your face," Lucus said as he took off my helmet and grabbed onto my head with his hands, "Pretty nasty cut above your nose."

"I do remember the cut. That was from the whole hitting-the-rock . . . thing."

"Gotcha."

"Spirits, Caen," a voice that sounded a lot like Vellia's came from my 3 o'clock high, "You don't look too good."

"I wouldn't know," I snarked back, "I can't see shit."

"What the. . .?" another voice spoke, belonging to Pago who was pretty close to where Vellia's voice came from.

"Yeah, I think I got dealt a pretty bad hand here, Pago."

"Well hold on there, Caen," Lucus interjected as I felt a damp rag pushing hard into my face.

"Hey! Watch it, Lucus! Don't take the rest of my damn head off!"

"Just calm down and wait one damn second, Caen."

All of a sudden it happened. Light came rushing into my eyes and I finally could see everyone. They all looked ok, a bit beaten up with knocks and scratches across everybody's armor, but the helmeted Lucus, Vellia, and Pago all appeared to be more concerned with my sorry state than their own.

"I can see."

I was so astonished that I could barely croak that sentence out. I was so amazed and relieved at the same time about how horrible it was that I lost my sight forever and yet, it had been gifted right back to me. I almost wanted to just throw myself on the ground and pray a million thanks to all the Spirits, but the pain and lots of other things stopped me doing so.

"You had a lot of dried blood from the cut which pooled over your eyes when you passed out," Lucus sighed, obviously annoyed with my moaning resulting in pretty much nothing really that serious, "I'll put some gel on your cut and you should be fine. It doesn't look like you have any shrapnel in your back, so it's probably just some bad bruising. I'm no doctor, but I think you'll manage, Caen."

"Thanks," I answered meekly with a sigh, "How much do I owe you now?"

"Too much," Lucus laughed.

I glanced around and finally got a full view of the devastation that formed what _was_ the Had. All of the buildings for the most part were destroyed, and the Spookhouse had been turned into a still-smoking pile of rubble. Metal and rocks were all over the place, tossed around like toys by the Reaper's heavy firepower. All I could do was shake my head as Lucus slapped a small bandage on my cut. The sky had finally taken on the light blue hues of a bright, full day. The atmosphere felt wrong for sitting in the aftermath of such a devastating attack. In better days, this weather would mean a nice day relaxing and messing around.

But today was not one of those days.

"You hear anything from the Spookhouse?" I asked to my fire team, and for a few minutes all I got back were stares.

"No," Vellia responded, breaking the palpable silence, "There's been no contact. We're on our own now."

"And the shuttle?"

"It's got a lot of the antenna from the Spookhouse on top of it," Pago answered quickly as he unholstered his Revenant, "The Delta 7 guys are ok, a little rattled, but ok. Somehow it didn't take a direct hit. It was just enough out of the firing line. Some luck, I guess."

"How's the engine and the eezo core?"

"It's still somewhat functional as far as I can tell," Pago continued, "It's a bit spotty in providing power though. We can probably get to Spaedar, but we're going to have to operate at some altitude in order to counter-act the shuttle turning into a coffin when the whole thing quits. I don't think it can survive much more abuse and it's nowhere near safe enough to take it off-planet."

"Can we get the antenna shit off?"

"Affirmative," Lucus answered cheerfully, "We've gotten quite a bit off already, but we weren't working at full speed because we were still trying to locate you."

"Alright . . ." I grunted back as I pushed myself up off the ground, the pain quickly returning, "Looks like we have a plan. Sorry if I can't be a lot of help right now lifting all that shit off."

Lucus laughed, "You had a fucking building fall on you Caen, we're not going to judge you. At least not this time."

"Well that's a relief, coming from you," I jeered back as I gave Lucus a slap on the back, "Let's try and get back home."

I got a nod from each of my team as we hurried, or in my case walked, back over to the shuttle pad. Now with my helmet discarded and gone, my battle-scarred and dull silver head was visible to everyone. My grey eyes darted around in all directions as I took up guard duty with my still-functioning Phaeston rifle. I had three large, dark black tattooed lines streaking down either side of my head, meeting under my head fringe to make a triple arch, the mark of the Parthian colony. I felt a little exposed not having my helmet anymore. It made me realize just how much we wore our combat helmets. As much as the protection and the modifications you could make to them were nice, I did find some merit in not wearing them, although the protection factor was an undeniable positive, and had probably saved me from even worse head trauma from my earlier tumble.

I could hear the whine and clashing of drills and saws on metal as Pago and Lucus worked away on the debris lodged on top of the Kodiak shuttle. I couldn't help but stare due south at the line cut firmly into the Diluvian dirt from the Reaper's laser, a deadly display of the monster's efficiency. I couldn't even begin to imagine what such firepower was doing in the cities.

Vallum.

Iratiana.

Madra.

But hopefully not Spaedar. At least not yet.

Vellia came over from the pad and gave me a bump on the back with her clenched hand, which made me groan in pain.

"_Not _funny, Vell."

"Gotta stay tough, Captain," she chuckled, "If a little back pain is going to stop you now, you're not going to make it through this war."

Even though she had a point, I wasn't too happy hearing it, "Yeah, just wait until you're banged up like me and you won't be cracking jokes anymore."

"I _do _know, Caen," Vell replied with a sigh, "Look, I'm . . ."

"You don't have to apologize, Vell," I said as I glanced over towards her for a moment, before turning my attention back to the devastation, "I know exactly what you're trying to do and I appreciate it. It doesn't help that I already feel like I let you guys down, but I know there was not much else I could do."

"You did the best job you could, Caen," Vell replied earnestly, "You gave us a chance, even though . . . Prosco didn't give us much of one to begin with. No one would look at what happened and say that you failed. You got all of us through the attacks alive, even the Reaper ship. If I had stayed in that shuttle, there was a good chance I could've gotten killed, even though the Delta guys didn't. So even if no one else says it, thank you Caen."

She held out her hand to me, and I glared down at it for a moment and took hold as we shook hands, "Don't mention it, Vell. We've got a bit of ways to go, but I swear I'm going to get all of us off Taetrus and back home."

"It's a better shot than the one I had in the Badlands. We'll make it, Captain."

I nodded as she returned back to the shuttle as the last of the debris was cleared from off the shuttle. Vell hurried inside and began firing up the Kodiak's power and engines, and the thrusters spat out blue flames as they came to life.

"Hallelujah!" Pago exclaimed as he and Lucus shared a high-five, "Time to go home!"

I shuffled over to the shuttle to join them as I heard Vell shout from inside, "We should get going while it's still working, guys!"

"Roger that!" Lucus yelled over the engine noise, "Caen?"

"Yeah!"

"We've got all of the stuff we could recover from the ready room loaded, ammo, explosives, anything we could salvage. Anything else we need to do before we dust off?"

"Negative!" I yelled back, "If you got all that shit, we should be good! Let's get going!"

"Roger!"

Lucus, Pago, and I all boarded the shuttle and the bay door to the Kodiak slid closed as Pago and I took a seat in the shuttle bay with Lucus taking the co-pilot seat up front. The Delta 7 crew still lay still in the stretchers, which were fastened into the shuttle-bay floor.

"You look a little beat up, Captain," the pilot quietly croaked as the shuttle jolted up into the air, "Did that Reaper have it out for you?"

"Maybe," I replied, managing a chuckle, "I think that thing had it out for all of us today."

Pago grunted in agreement as the shuttle banked in the direction of Spaedar. Now it was only a twenty or so minute flight to the next unknown.

For a few minutes everything felt peaceful. The shuttle was working, the only sound was the rushing of the air and the hum of the eezo core working away. Shit was finally falling our way.

And then it didn't.

In a flash, the lights cut off and the engine and eezo core completely cut out. The shuttle lurched forward and I had to grab on to my seat to stop myself from flying across the shuttle bay into the cockpit. Pago was desperately clinging onto the seat harness bar that was above his seat. The two Delta 7 guys were probably thanking their lucky stars that they were sealed in what were essentially sleeping bags in the stretchers, and were probably a little less stressed than all of us.

"Son of a bitch!" Vell yelled from the pilot's seat, "Reboot the damn system, Lucus!"

"I'm fucking trying, it's totally hosed!"

I then heard a series of loud bangs, as I moved my head over to see Lucus kicking away at something under his seat.

"Is that your shitty plan, Lucus?" I yelled.

"It's the only damn one we have right now, so let me handle it! Come on, you . . . useless . . . tub!"

At last, the lights came back on and the shuttle pulled level, and I could sit back down in my seat.

"See, Caen," Lucus chirped happily, "The old girl loves a good kick every once in a while."

"Shut up, Lucus," Vell answered for me as their attention was turned back to the flight.

Luckily that was the only outage we suffered before arriving over Spaedar, and much to our dismay, the situation looked fairly desperate.

"Caen," Lucus called from the cockpit, "You're gonna need to see this."

Spaedar was a fairly large city surrounded by marsh land, with the Reapers encircling most of the metropolitan area and squeezing the encirclement tighter, pushing the Turian forces back in the direction of the large spaceport in the center of the city. There were some Hierarchy fighters flying around trying to affect some close air support, but the Reapers were still advancing, slowly, but steadily. From our vantage position coming in from the north-east side of the city, we could see there was a lot of ground resistance, and despite the constant fire from the main Reaper ships, the seemingly miniscule forces were holding on.

"Can you get me in contact with the commander on the ground?" I asked Lucus as Vellia dropped our altitude.

"Yeah, hang on," Lucus replied as he worked away on his control console for a little while, and then gave me a thumbs up once he got the right frequency, "It's a Colonel, Colonel Verilus."

"Colonel Verilus, this is Feral team inbound from FOB Hadrius, we are in damaged shuttle and have casualties in need of immediate evacuation, is there anywhere we can land, over?"

"FOB Hadrius? Identify, Feral."

"This is Captain Caenus Pius, Blackwatch, of the base defense team at Forward Operating Base Hadrius from the Wildlands, I'm with my four-man fire-team and two casualties of a gunship crew, over"

"Blackwatch? What were you guys doing ou- . . . forget I said anything. You can land at the space-port, there's a staging area not far from the main terminal. I'll come meet you there and brief you on the situation. Are you trying to get your team and casualties off-planet, over?"

"Affirmative, Colonel."

"The situation is a little complicated, but I'll see what I can do, we have a lot of guys waiting to get out, and we're struggling with the Reaper ships bearing down on us, over."

"Roger that Colonel, we are inbound, over and out."

I sighed as Vellia dropped the Kodiak down to the spaceport. "Well, it's something."

"We still have a shot," Vellia added, "Hopefully it's a good one."

"Think you can get us in without taking damage, Vell?" I asked.

"We didn't come all this way to not find out."

I went back to my seat as Vell pitched the Kodiak into a dive, picking up speed as we hurtled down towards the spaceport. I didn't even bother looking out at the countless rounds that probably flew past the shuttle during the descent. I was past caring about that sort of thing.

My soreness finally began to subside as Vellia touched down the shuttle outside a ramshackle staging area on the concrete runways of the spaceport, now filled with makeshift pre-fab fortifications and all sorts of supplies scattered all over the place. A lot C77 and Jiris IFVs along with M-080 APCs, were getting repairs, and casualties were constantly streaming in from all directions.

"What a mess," Lucus muttered as the shuttle powered down and we began unloading the gear and the wounded Delta 7 crew. A couple of medics greeted us and took the gunship crew off to the medical building inside the main spaceport terminal which loomed large over us now, a dark grey, metal built precisely to form with perfect corners and angles, and reinforced from the civil war with unceasing fire coming from gun emplacements and bunkers on top.

"Captain!"

The shout came from Colonel Verlius, a tall, imposing individual, with bright red armor decked out in urban camouflage with several embedded bandoliers. His face had some fresh scars under his right eye and on his mandibles.

"Colonel," I replied and saluted before we quickly shook hands, "Glad to see we're still fighting."

"If you can call it that," Verilus responded, "I can't believe you made it out from the Wildlands. We thought that whole sector was lost."

"It is now. We got a direct hit from one of the main Reaper ships. Took our FOB out in only a few strikes."

"They're devastating our front-line forces right now," Verilus added dryly, "We can't do much with what we have. Almost all of our armored vehicles are totally out of action, and the fighters we do have can't do much to the Reaper ships except mildly annoy them. I haven't told my direct subordinates yet, but we're probably due to be overrun in a day or two (approx. 18.5-37 Earth Hours)."

Despite the harrowing information Verilus had given to me, he seemed surprisingly calm and for the most part . . . disappointed. He undoubtedly wanted to give the Reapers the best shot he possibly could, and considering the nature of the invasion of the planet, there was never a chance of that being a reality.

"Spirits . . . you said things were complicated about getting people out, Colonel?"

"Affirmative. I can get your team out fairly soon. Blackwatch gets priority, but I can't evacuate your casualties. If we're sending people back, they have to be able-bodied troops for the fight. That's the last order I got handed down from Palaven. I'm sorry, Captain. We lost General Calaninus this morning, so know you are not alone in your pain."

I clenched my fists tightly as I glared down at the ground.

_I got them out of the Had to die in Spaedar . . . _

"I do have something I would like your team's help with in the meantime, Captain."

_Of course he does._

"What do we need to do?"

"The frigate you'll be flying out on is on the south side of the staging area. Reaper forces have been probing the defenses around that part of the perimeter, and we think there may be another attack in that direction soon. If you could bolster the defenses in that area, I can get the ship out clean."

"Just point us where we need to go, Colonel."

He pointed to a decently sized frigate over my shoulder about a klick away from where we were standing, "Lieutenant Sulis is in charge of the defense contingent over there. Tell him I sent you. I don't care what you commandeer to make it happen. If this ship makes it out, it's my one great victory of my career."

"We'll make it work, sir," I saluted half-heartedly and walked back to my team as Verilus nodded and walked back to the terminal in silence.

"Where to?" Lucus asked as he hoisted a few grenade belts over his right shoulder and held a crate of thermal clips under his left arm.

I pointed to my left behind the shuttle to the parked frigate, "We have to defend our ride for a little bit."

"What about the gunship crew?" Pago asked, "Are they going with us?"

I let out a long breath, "Unfortunately, no. Palaven issued a standing order that only able-bodied troops can leave."

For a few long moments we stewed in the silence. Each of us no doubt thought of how severe the fight was now if we were leaving the wounded behind. This conflict was not one of confidence for the Hierarchy.

This war was desperation.

Eventually we unpacked all of our gear and began our trek to the waiting frigate. We walked through the pre-fab military shantytown that the runways and docks of Spaedar had become. We got a lot of looks and second-glances from the regular troops. It was not everyday you saw four, armed to the teeth, Blackwatch soldiers walking by your post. To most regular Hierarchy troops, it was a moment that would almost equate to the Spirits taking physical form and walking by you on the street.

We did receive a few nods and short words of encouragement. But our beaten-up state was no doubt a bit disparaging.

_The untouchable soldiers and envoys of death and destruction are scarred and battered. What chance does a regular soldier have if we are in this state?_

My mind eventually blanked out as we reached the frigate, which looked like a slightly downgraded version of the once invincible v-winged Verrikan, albeit shorter but a bit fatter overall. This ship was still a sleek machine though.

A gaggle of about twenty soldiers was gathered not far from the tail and I could see why Verilus was worried about this position. The imposing concrete wall that had once safeguarded this area had been destroyed in several key locations and the fortified towers had all been brought down around here. Beyond the walls, it was open dead city, with not a soul traversing the streets or alleyways. There were blast marks and burns from small-arms fire all over the buildings.

Once our gang neared the gathering, a lot of heads turned and many of the troops stepped out of the way to reveal what I assumed to be the pale-brown faced Lieutenant Sulis.

"Lieutenant Sulis?" I barked.

"Yes, sir," the young lieutenant responded and saluted, albeit with some serious hesitation and everyone around quickly followed suit.

"At ease, everyone," I ordered. I could hear the muffled chuckle of Lucus when I continued, "I'm Captain Caenus Pius, Colonel Verilus sent me to help defend this area and the frigate before my team gets extracted off-planet."

"Your help will be greatly appreciated, sir," Sulis said as the rest of what I assumed was his unit headed to their defensive positions, "We don't have long until the crew have the Heraklion ready to go, but we're already down on manpower as it is."

"Have you mined the areas around the breaches in the defenses?" I asked as I gave a hand signal to let Lucus, Pago, and Vellia loose to start their preparations.

"Affirmative, Captain. We've mined about 200 meters out beyond the wall into the city to serve as sort of an early warning system if nothing else. Where do you want us, Captain?"

"You're the expert here, Silus," I quickly answered, "You know this territory better than I do, so whatever has worked so far, keep doing it. My squad will fill in the gaps."

"Roger that, sir," Silus saluted as he jogged off to a sand-bagged crater-hole only about ten meters from where I was standing.

"Alright, everyone," I radioed over the comms, "Keep your heads on a swivel and stay frosty." I walked up through the many craters inside the spaceport perimeter and found one only about 35 meters from the wall to the left of Pago, who had lodged his Revanant down into the ground and had a few Cobra missile launchers lying ready next to him.

"In position," Lucus responded.

"In position," Vellia answered.

"Right with you," Pago replied as he gave me a thumbs up.

I gave one back as I placed my rifle against the ground in front of me, as a sort of crude weapon emplacement. "Colonel Verilus, this is Captain Pius, call sign Feral actual."

"Go ahead Feral."

"I am in position with Silus' detachment awaiting contact. Keep us updated on the Heraklion, over."

"Roger that Feral, I'll keep you in the loop, over and out."

I took the next minutes to focus solely on my breathing, putting everything else out of my mind completely; all I could hear was my mother's voice, a memory long-embedded in my brain from years and year ago.

"_Fear is like the breeze. It is nothing if you choose to let it pass you by."_

I kept repeating that line, over and over. It was a mantra I had stood by from the very first moment I began training, all the way through to this moment. Every time I needed to focus myself when playing music wasn't an option, my mother's words always did the trick. It always brought me back to home, to growing up on Parthia. Everything else just ebbed away in significance. The scorched and crumbling city-scape before me no longer registered as a battlefield. It was simply another step, another small obstacle I had to get over to make my way home. Or at least, begin the defense of my people's home.

In the mean time, there was this Taetrus shit show to contend with.

The ground began to rattle as Lieutenant Silus confirmed my first suspicions of the cause, "The first mines being detonated, Captain!"

"Roger that!" I yelled back, "When they get in visual range, conserve your ammo and be disciplined! Getting sloppy now means we all die!"

"Affirmative!" Silus shouted in reply as several of his detachment began poking their rifles out of their entrenchments, readying themselves for the first salvoes of the impending firefight.

"Pago, you take the left breach," I ordered over the radio, much more calmly than I had to Silus, "Vell, you take right. Lucus you're our clean-up man."

"Copy," all three of them replied in unison.

I steadied my hand on the trigger of my Phaeston as the roaring and explosions drew nearer.

"Harvester incoming!" someone shouted behind us, as one of the deformed monstrosities made a low pass over us, blasting away at the area just beyond the walls, destroying quite a few of the mines in a large, billowing explosion. I only recoiled a few centimeters from the concussion this time. I was razor-focused on holding my sight on the alleyways and streets, waiting for the moment one of those ugly bastards decided to make himself known.

"Is the Harvester circling back around?" I called out.

"Negative," Lucus answered, "He's bugging out to our nine o'clock. Looks like it was just a gun-run to clear the way, over."

"Roger that."

And to sate our impatience the first of the cannibals finally detonated the last row of mines before the clearing made by the Harvester. Everyone was desperate to shoot at the last of the mines' victims, but discipline kept us waiting, waiting for the next unlucky ones to cross in front of our barrels.

"Contact," Lucus called as a shot rang out from his Armax Punisher, sending a cannibal that was out of my view tumbling down. A few moments later, there were plenty for all of us to shoot at.

Muzzle flashes enveloped the area as the troops began to open fire. The trademark deep report from Pago's Revenant blended quickly into a rapid rolling series of cracks in my left ear. I let my eyes work their ways to my first target which came into my view from the center breach in the wall. I quickly aimed towards the head of one of the all too familiar bloody cannibals and squeezed off a three round burst, staggering the abomination, and then with another burst, sent it collapsing in a gory heap to the concrete. In a moment, I had acquired another cannibal and smashed the running Reaper slave face-first into mass-accelerated hot metal, decapitating it in quick order.

Lucus' firing was slowly increasing speed as the cannibals began flooding into the streets in front of us.

"Pago, use the Cobras!"

"On it! Shot out!"

A rocket slammed into a large mass of Cannibals only 75 meters or so from the wall, turning many of them into red mist, and others found themselves sliced into big chunks of flesh.

"Good effect! Fire again!" I ordered.

"Copy, shot out!"

Another Cobra missile forced its way into the growing horde of Cannibals. At least thirty to forty of them disappeared in an explosion as if they had never even existed in the first place.

"The Harvester is coming back around, ten o'clock high!" Vellia yelled from my right.

"Roger, Pago, hit that motherfucker!" I called as I kept up my fire on the encroaching crowd of Cannibals. In my peripheral vision to my left there was a bright flash as Pago fired the missile up into the air towards the diving Harvester.

"Good hit, good effect on target!" Lucus radioed.

For a moment I felt a little bit of relief, but then I heard, "Oh shit! Take cover, take cover, prepare for impact!"

I threw myself down into my crater-hole, covering my head with my arms as the ground felt like it was breaking and tearing itself apart right under me. The world turned fuzzy, and I didn't dare get up until the shaking stopped. Several agonizing seconds passed until the chaos ended, and I slowly peaked my head up to see the Harvester that Pago had fired at, lying motionless in the road; some of Silus' detachment had gotten out of their entrenchments, and right at that moment, I remembered what had happened the last time we took down a Harvester. I stayed in my hole but waved Silus' troops back, screaming,

"GET BACK IN YOU— "

I hadn't been quick enough. The Harvester's body rippled into a gigantic explosion in the streets beyond the wall, sending the weakened fortifications tumbling down and several of Silus' detachment flying. The Heraklion was barely sitting upright, but somehow it didn't topple.

"How many are down back there, Lucus?"

"At least a third, you guys should take point, they're not going to be able to take the brunt again!"

"Feral actual, this is Colonel Verilus, what was that, over?"

"One of my squad hit and brought down a Harvester, the weakened part of the walls is down over here now. We have a massive swath of territory open in front of us now."

"Damn it! The Heraklion is almost ready, ETA five minutes, can you hold that long, Feral, over?"

"What other choice do we have, over and out."

"Vell," I called, my voice lowering into an angry growl, "With me, to the rubble of the wall! Pago take the right flank!"

"Roger!"

"Grenades!" I yelled to Pago as he tossed me a grenade belt as he ran behind me, which I quickly threw over my shoulder and attached to my chest bandolier. Vellia came up on my left, armed with her Scimitar shotgun, with her Cabal-trademark poison blades on her arms extended and primed for an up-close bloodbath. Vellia and I set ourselves up just behind the peak of a large pile of concrete rubble, poking our weapons over the top in anticipation of another wave.

"I'll take left, Vell, you go center, Pago will pick up everything direct right! Keep an eye on us Lucus!"

"Copy!"

The firing began in earnest again, as the cannibals didn't hesitate to take advantage of what they thought was a defending force reeling from the downed Harvester.

How unfortunate it was for them that they got to play with angry Blackwatch instead.

My Phaeston jolted as I moved from target to target, dropping the approaching Reapers with short bursts.

"Reloading!" I yelled, as I exchanged thermal clips in a fraction of a second, a move rehearsed and honed for many years, executed flawlessly.

But they kept coming, and once they dropped into the forty-meter range, Vell and I began the explosive rain. We lobbed several grenades into the mass, throwing lifeless bodies spinning up into the air and back down to the streets. But even that wasn't going to cut it.

"Let me go, Caen," Vell said calmly as she discharged her Scimitar twice, staggering three cannibals for a moment with the first shot, and killing them with the second, "You know I need to do this."

"Damn it, Vell," I grunted back, "This isn't that simple!"

"Sure it is."

Loading a fresh thermal clip into her Scimitar, Vell disappeared in a flash towards the mob of cannibals, and just when you thought she was as good as dead, the artificial sound of what was actually the slicing of blades filled the air, as the heaving mass of Reaper forces began turning green and were punted into each other, in a chain reaction. For a moment, the scrum cleared where I could see Vell in the middle, holding an impaled cannibal above her head as the poison from her blades splashed down from the now green colored blob. In the next moment, another group of cannibals was sent rolling into each other off in another direction.

As I picked myself up and began running towards the blob and fired into the outer individuals of the growing circle of Reapers, I heard Lucus mutter in shock as a round from his Punisher barely whizzed past me to my left, "And I thought I'd never see the day a Cabal would do _that_."

But I knew Vellia was beginning to struggle as the circle began to close around her, and her shotgun began to flash in the middle of the group.

I holstered my Phaeston and activated my omni-blades, one on each arm, and began slicing through the cannibals, the super-heated blades making quick work of the Cannibals who were too occupied with the tantalizing prize in the center of their trap.

I was in a frenzy.

I wasn't even thinking.

These were totally subconscious actions.

My brain was not comprehending how and where I would hit the next blob of Reaper controlled flesh. My mind was occupied solely on getting to Vellia.

It took maybe another fifteen seconds, but I got there, and Vell was still holding her own, but was pretty winded. I had cut a pretty decent swath out with my omni-blade work, and I threw a grenade back where I came to keep the hole open for a few moments longer.

"Come on!" I ordered pointing back towards the spaceport, "Your last stand isn't today!"

She nodded as we ran out of the Cannibals. I threw a couple more grenades behind us, expending the last one from the belt Pago gave me right as we broke free and began running back, and a hail of fire picked up once the last of my grenades went off.

Vellia and I threw ourselves on the other side of the rubble, giving each other a quick fist-bump once we were back on the ground.

"Hopefully . . . that bought us enough . . . time," Vellia huffed, taking a minute to catch her breath as I un-holstered my Phaeston and resumed firing at the remaining Cannibals, "I'm getting too old . . . for this shit."

I chuckled, "You're still fucking crazy Vell."

"When I'm not . . . that's when I retire, Caen."

"Whatever," I added as I turned my attention back to the now dead streets of Spaedar. All that remained were bodies. Nothing living walked the sector we had defended.

A few of the soldiers from Silus' battalion were staring in awe at the devastation we had rendered. Piles, piles, and more piles of the enemy on the streets. Blood and guts in the alleyways. Ash and fire on the sidewalks.

_When Blackwatch engages, at the end, there are only the dead . . ._

"Feral actual, this the Heraklion, we are ready to launch, your squad is instructed to board ASAP, over," a new voice, a clean and less gravelly one than a frontline combat soldier, said over the comms.

Not a soul had moved in the streets following our extermination of the ground forces that decided to come our way. Despite the success, none of us felt particularly pleased. Not only did Vellia and I have to go into full desperation mode, but we all knew deep down this repulsion meant nothing. Spaedar would eventually fall. Nothing we did changed that outcome.

"Roger Heraklion," I responded, lifting myself up from the downed walls of the spaceport, "We're inbound. Colonel Verilus, can you confirm?"

"Affirmative, Feral. Thanks for your help out there. Remember to tell everyone back home we fought for them."

"I will, Colonel." My promise felt cold and unsympathetic, but it was all I could muster. This was our way. Everyone fighting to the end, to the last man, was our way. Simply throwing up our hands and quitting was never an option. Turians would rather die than live in such shame that we had not fought with every bit of effort we had.

As I walked back to the Heraklion, past the roughed-up platoon of Lieutenant Silus, there were no disparaging glares about the special forces getting a ride out while they got left to die. A few gave us their thanks for helping them. Pago and Lucus, unsolicited, gave over the remainder of our supply of explosives to help them in the next defense that was sure to come in the future.

"Thanks for helping us hold the line, Captain," Lieutenant Silus barked confidently this time, "Getting to work alongside Blackwatch before the end is a gift I can never repay to the Spirits of this place. They're listening to us, at least for now."

I held out my hand as I exchanged a final handshake, "And may they continue to listen. Good luck, Lieutenant."

Now the Heraklion was humming with power, poised for a jump into the boundless void of spaces above, and beyond. The cargo bay ramp was open towards the rear of the craft, where Lucus was already waiting for Pago, Vellia, and myself to show up.

"Looks like you're getting sentimental, eh, Caen?"

"Maybe."

We all walked up the ramp to a decently sized cargo bay that was fairly well equipped with the sorts of supplies you would need for a frigate to conduct a full-deployment, weapons, ammo, all the dextro-rations you would ever want, mechanical parts, all neatly stored and stacked in black metal crates.

I looked back for a moment as the cargo bay ramp rose and shut, removing the daylight of Taetrus and replacing it with the artificial light of the Heraklion. That was the last I would ever see of the ground war on Taetrus. It was an unceremonious end to a place that I had lost so much fighting over. Thinking back to then, I felt a bit emotional, which is not much in the grand scheme of things, due to the fact that a Turians' propensity to be emotionally open is about equal to the level that a rock is alive. Even so, I felt torn. I was leaving behind a bit of my soul on Taetrus, a part that, to this very day, has never returned. I believe that was true for all of us.

"So that's it?" Pago said, glancing around at the few maintenance crew members of the ship who were carrying out their duties without a second thought about us. The ship jolted suddenly a few seconds later, and we could feel it begin to climb up and away from Spaedar, the distant dull thuds of warfare fading away eventually to total silence.

_Silence._

_I thought I'd never hear pure silence like that again . . ._

"Looks like it. Not much we can do if the ship gets shot down now. At least it'll be quick if it happens now," Vellia answered with a sigh as she took a seat on the middle of the floor, and started unloading all of her gear and weapons from her armor, "I am desperate for some shut-eye."

"Same here," Lucus replied as all of us followed example, neatly unpacking our gear and weapons.

"I can't wait for some chow, honestly," Pago added as we found a corner of the cargo bay to leave our things. One of the crewmembers, without a word, gave us a nod, as we left our things to head to the upper decks. Right as we reached the main stairway, a navy captain greeted us.

The captain was a decently tall individual with brown and light tanned skin, and dark black eyes, outfitted in his dress blues. His black tattoos were very much similar to mine.

"Another one from Parthia?" the captain said as everyone in my team looked to me, "Well, at least I'm not the only one."

"At least we're alive." I retorted, my voice growling. I don't know why I released a bit of my pent-up anger on this captain, but something about his pristine look after seeing nothing but a sea of destruction made me a little angry deep down.

"Fair enough," the captain said with a cough, "The Admiral is waiting for you up on the bridge."

_An admiral? On a frigate?_

A short trek up the stairs and a walk down a few hallways led to the bridge of the Heraklion, and it was buzzing. Engineering and piloting crew members were hurrying in and out in a state of controlled frenzy. There was a large galaxy map console in the center displaying the general state of the occupied space above and around Palaven.

Standing above everyone else was someone I didn't expect to see.

It was Rear Admiral Mareus Stilchus. One of the brightest and most decorated individuals within all of the Turian navy.

Mareus Stilchus stood at half a head over most Turians, decked out in combat armor, which was somewhat surprising, considering his station. His plated skin was midnight black, with bright red face tattoos almost fully covering his face in an intricate wave-like pattern. Those tattoos were indicative of the Stilchi family's role in being the primary instigators of creating the Galatana Colony in the Horse Head Nebula on Amaranthine. The Stilchi family to this very day are one of the oldest and arguably the most prestigious bloodlines on Palaven, with countless admirals, generals, and primarchs to their name over the course of Turian history.

Mareus' dark blue eyes could pierce through anyone, and his reputation in the navy compounded that fact. The young Stilchi had a lot to live up to with a well-respected admiral as his father who had served during the First Contact War. He had earned his stripes as a well-decorated fighter pilot and worked his way up the ranks as a trailblazer in developing compact fleet maneuvers and tactics. He had taken part in very public exchange programs with the Systems Alliance, and had even gone to Earth to experience some of the new technologies being developed there for space combat.

When Mareus turned to face us, he looked a bit worse for wear, and more than anything else, tired. The captain took no time in introducing us,

"Admiral, Feral team is on station, as requested, sir."

Mareus nodded slowly, blinking a few times before speaking. "Thank you Captain Quinlus, you're dismissed to your duties."

"Yes, sir," Captain Quinlus responded before walking briskly towards the front of the bridge and what appeared to be the cockpit.

"I'm sorry I couldn't be more accommodating upon your arrival," Mareus' deep voice bellowed, "I'm Mareus Stilchus. I assume my reputation has preceded me, much as your team's did as well, Captain Pius." My team and I saluted as Mareus saluted back with a chuckle, "Welcome aboard."

"Thank you, sir," I responded, rigidly forcing myself into the position of attention.

Mareus seemed perplexed by our formality, and clicked his mandibles slightly as he cocked his head at us, "Please, Mareus is fine, for all of you. After what we've dealt with today, I find myself a bit tired of the rank charade."

_Rank charade?_

"I'm surprised you were down here on Taetrus with the tenth fleet burning," Vellia chimed in, her curiosity having fought back her fatigue.

Mareus winced at the comment, "Not by my choice, I'm afraid. I would have been up there if not for the Heraklion suffering a core breach a few days ago that needed to be repaired. Luckily, we were able to fix it after your defense bought us enough time. I'm an admiral without ships to lead. I can't imagine what the bloodbath was like when the Reapers hit . . . I should have gone down with them."

"It's going to be a long war," I sighed, "A long war for all of us."

"Indeed," Mareus replied, "We should be up to FTL in just a few moments, and once that's done, you are free to help yourselves to whatever amenities you wish. There's an empty bunk room on the level below that you all are free to occupy. I asked our quartermaster to leave some rations in there for you, since I imagine it's been a long day for your team, Captain.

And once you all get settled and some down-time, I'd like to speak to you Captain, if you would permit it."

"Certainly sir."

All of us relaxed as we turned and shuffled down the staircase to the bunk room, which took some finding as there were ten of the basically identical rooms, but eventually we found ours due to the rations lying on each of the cots of the relatively fresh, unused room. I cleared my cot and lay down to take a quick nap, as I let the rest of my team do whatever they wanted. As I drifted off to sleep, I finally felt a little bit safe. A wave of calmness swept over me, and everything, at last, faded to darkness.

"_Fear is like the breeze. It is nothing if you choose to let it pass you by."_

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**AN/: So . . . a lot has happened, and we inch closer to the beginning of the intersection point between ME3's main story and this tale. Despite being a bit of a long read, I think it helps to establish the bearing down of such a battle on the minds of the team to give a better idea of how taxing long and drawn out battles like these are. There's never really a safe moment until you're away or the battle is done. Mareus is an interesting character as well who will show up from time to time, but there will be more information on that next chapter, which I think you guys will also enjoy. Please be sure to let me know what you all think. **

**Cheers,**

**Esquire 6.**


	4. Outlier

**AN/: Back again with another chapter. Big shout-out to PartyPat22 who proofread this chapter to help catch my mistakes before I posted this time around, thanks again buddy! Also thanks to PartyPat(again), Colstrent, Typedoutatnight, and Saint Dismas for their reviews! Anyways, let's dive back in.**

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"_**Our knowledge of life is limited to death. What will happen afterwards? And what can possibly become of us?"**__**-Erich Maria Remarque, **_**All Quiet on the Western Front**

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**Chapter 4: Outlier**

After a few hours of napping, I woke up, unable to force myself back to the darkness. The soreness in my back and now my face had flared up again. I turned to sit on my cot, grimacing and squinting my eyes through the bearable, but annoying, pain. I found the rest of my team silent or asleep.

Lucus was passed out in his cot, with several discarded bags of rations lying neatly stacked beside his bed as he snored. He slept on his back with his hands clasped together in front of him.

_Perhaps that's where the selection board saw the soldier in him._

Pago was also asleep, with his back turned to the room and his face towards the wall. He slept silently and it almost appeared that he wasn't even breathing, except for every few moments when he snatched a short breath, probably a reaction to some dream.

Vellia, however, was in a meditative stance on the floor at the center of the room. The Cabal was utterly still. Vellia's legs were crossed, with her hands resting open on top of her knees. I never knew if she slept like that, but I did know she barely slept at all. She had mentioned to me that her constant meditation helped keep her head clear. I knew it hurt her, like it did all of us, to leave Taetrus behind after all that happened. I won't argue the fact she suffered the worst out of all of us. Even though Vellia was combat hungry, she was a very thoughtful individual. I had a feeling that Blackwatch brass would try and split us once we got back to Menae, but I was going to do everything in my power to prevent that. Both Vellia and Pago had made themselves inseparable from the team.

"What are you thinking about?" Vellia asked, with her helmet now removed. Her chalky-white face was amplified by the artificial light of the room, with her green eyes not even stuttering as she kept her focus on the metal floor.

"It seems everyone wants to know the answer to that question," I said earnestly, my voice barely reaching above a whisper.

"Do you know the answer?"

"Maybe."

"Well, that's a start then. If you want my guess, I'd have to say something about leaving the planet we slaved over for a year only to get a fallen spirit to whisk us away at a moment's notice."

"Is that what you think of Mareus, a fallen spirit?"

She chuckled pretty heartily at that comment. "No, but I personally remain pessimistic of our chances with him."

"And why's that?"

"You think it's just coincidence that we were the only able-bodied troops that got to walk away? There were plenty of others that had to stay behind."

"Well, they were ordered to defend their posts to the end. We didn't have that sort of leash on us."

"Caen, it's not that simple."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You seriously don't think Mareus didn't try and wrangle hold of us as soon as we were on station from Verilus? I guarantee you he did."

"What's making you say all this?"

"Why don't you go and have your 'talk' with him. That may provide some answers."

_What the fuck is she on about?_

"Alright," I sighed, lifting myself to my feet with an added grunt, "No wonder I wasn't the spy type."

"Spies aren't the only ones playing at subterfuge, Caen. A primarch or a general is typically the one telling them what to do."

My mind was all twisted as she said that. I walked out of the room, the automatic door sliding shut behind me, leaving me alone to the sound of the Heraklion humming away as if the galaxy was in total order.

I headed back up to the bridge to find the previously buzzing hive to be dormant, save for Mareus and a few of the higher-ranking officers.

"The Hierarchy hasn't even fully organized the response fleet yet," the XO, Captain Quinlus droopily said, his vigor from before seemingly gone, "There's no way they're getting to Taetrus. Judging from the projections, they're probably going to be in the Trebia system and on the ground in Palaven within two weeks, likely even earlier."

_What? They were lying to Prosco the whole time? They knew there was nothing they could do in time and gave him the false hope that ended up killing them all!_

I had to swallow my anger, like every good Turian soldier, as I approached the strategic map. I stood there silently, a meter or so to the right of Mareus. The junior admiral rested his head on his right hand as he gazed longingly into the virtual image of the stars.

"Oh people, know that you have committed great sins. If you ask me what proof I have for these words, I say it is because I am the punishment of God. If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you . . ." the young Stilchi muttered to himself. He turned his head slightly towards me a moment later and nodded. "You know where I heard that?"

"On Earth," I replied, "Only humans talk about their God in that manner."

"Yes," Mareus said, as he dismissed the rest of his retinue, "But have you heard those words before?"

"No."

"It's the saying of supposedly one of the greatest conquerors of the human race. The words felt apt as we look into the eyes of this monster . . . the Reapers."

"One we seem to be already shooting ourselves in the foot against, sir."

Again, Mareus betrayed his confusion, his eyes darting for a fleeting moment, like they had with my refusal to accept his previously articulated request, but he quickly acquiesced. "Well, that's to be expected, Captain. We're a big monolith. And after the civil war, Taetrus is a moral battlefield as well as a military one."

"Sure, and we've already wasted too much time to actually attack. We need to defend Palaven. If they smashed the Batarians at the speed the reports said, they're going to be there a lot faster than anyone expects right now. As much as I'd love to go back and kick their asses, I'm not going to do it when there's absolutely no chance of winning."

Mareus looked back over to the map, humming in thought, "And what do we tell the people on Palaven? That we aren't going to try? When Primarch Fedorian addresses the people on this, they're going to want blood and fast."

"This war . . . it's not the same as any other we've fought. We go in alone? Say goodbye to all of those men and ships. You're not getting them back. We need help from the fucking Council."

"Good luck getting that," Mareus chuckled, "We're going to have competition for getting help first. Earth has fallen."

"You can't be serious."

"I am. The Reapers have so many ships they're attacking on several fronts with unstoppable force. No one has been able to even slow them down yet."

"And that's why the brass wants to counter? They think that is going to slow the Reapers down?"

Mareus grimly looked back towards me, "It's the only plan everyone can agree on right now. My tactics for small maneuvering fleets are going to be useless against a force like this. Only sheer firepower and strength is going to win this. As much as it pains me to do so, I have to accept this reality. I don't like it. But there it is."

"So, where does that leave us? What are you going to do?"

"Well, as the sole survivor of the tenth fleet, we have to report back in to Palaven. I'm sure the Primarch and the rest of the high command probably wants to hear about the situation."

_Oh, he just has the ear of the Primarch and everyone at his beck and call . . ._

"And what about my team?"

"I'll make sure you get to wherever you need to go, Captain. You name it."

"Menae. I'll forward you the coordinates for our headquarters." I worked away at my omni-tool for a second as I linked him the data.

"I have it, Captain. Menae will be our first stop once we're in the Trebia system."

"Thank you, sir," I answered as I turned around and headed back down the stairs to the team room.

Now my suspicions were immediately focused back on Vellia.

_Mareus seemed like just another high-brow trailblazer. Not really as special as I thought. Why was Vell so worried?_

I walked back to the bunk room and opened the door to find Lucus and Pago still out cold as Vell was sitting in a relaxed stance against her cot. I motioned for her to come out into the hallway, and she quickly jumped to her feet and came through the doorway.

"How was the conversation?" Vellia asked, her smarminess from before completely gone.

"I didn't see what you're overly pessimistic about, Vell. He just seems like a typical upper-crust officer who thinks he's a trailblazer."

She looked over her shoulder for a moment as she let out a long sigh. "I know you don't have any good reason to really trust me. But, I know his family a little bit better than the average person would. And they're . . . not the paragons of Turian virtue that the people believe they are."

I cocked my head at her response and gave a sarcastic huff, "Upper crust families have major issues. I am absolutely _astounded_ at this development, Vell." It only took a moment for my statement to twist Vellia's face into anger.

"Do you just not get it?"

"I don't understand what sort of crazy theory you're trying to posit at my feet with no evidence beyond, 'they're bad and I know it'. I know you may not want to give up info, but that's the only way you're going to convince me. I'm sorry if that's not what you want to do."

Vellia dropped her head for a moment, taking some time to gather her thoughts together, and then she glared back up at me. Her eyes were filled with conviction now. "Do you know why the Saren-Blackwatch rumors started?"

"No, I don't. But I guess you have something to explain why."

Vellia lightened back up at that comment. "Well, to explain it simply, I'm the reason they started."

_What the fuck did she just say?_

My open mouth must have betrayed my shocked thoughts as Vellia laughed softly, glancing back over her shoulder again. "Yeah, I'll go ahead and apologize for that Caen."

"For starting it?"

"No. For being Saren's younger sister."

My eyes began bulging to exorbitant sizes. "That's . . . not possible."

"Says who? Do you think anyone actually bothered to check whether Saren had any other siblings besides Desolas?"

"It just . . ."

"Seems crazy?"

"Yeah, more than a little." I sighed, shaking my head to ward off the growing cloud that seemed to be forming inside my mind.

"My parents . . . have connections. What people don't tell you about my brother is that they pulled the strings to help him earn all those early promotions, at least within the Hierarchy. The Council made him a Spectre because they wanted a killer. And Saren was that, to a major degree."

"Sure," I replied holding up my hands, "But what does this have to do with you saying your family name is Macer, and having to lie to everyone about your identity?"

"I'm under orders to."

"From who?"

"Well, since I already broke those orders, what does it matter? Primarch Fedorian."

"And why does he care?"

"You need to stop with the jokes, Caen. Do you realize the repercussions of letting another Arterius sibling serve in the special forces when the others had . . . such bad outcomes? If people found out, who knows what would happen. They'd ask me to answer for my brother's crimes. It's not like I only really spoke to him two or three times in my whole life, and that we never got along. The other races, especially the humans, would want me impaled on a stake. My parents pulled the strings to get me with the Cabals anyway since I wanted out."

"Why didn't you go merc then?"

"Caen, I'm not that much of an asshole. I was never in it for the money. And besides, Turian biotics don't have the best of reputations. Mostly, we're known for getting killed."

"Except you."

"Yeah . . . except me apparently."

It took a little bit longer and some silence for all those facts to sink in. I still couldn't quite believe the story. It seemed way too far-fetched, but even so, Vellia's talent in combat was undeniable. And her reasoning did have some sense to it. Turians are very good at accepting things at face-value a lot of the time. We don't like to dig into the muck.

But here I was.

Knee-deep in the muck.

"So what does this have to do with 'fallen spirit' Mareus up there?" I finally asked, hoping for a real answer this time.

"The Stilchi and the Arterius blood-lines go way back. They've been partners, in war and sometimes in crime. My father was good friends with Fleet Admiral Stilchus, Mareus' father. _Was_. And if you're enough of a major scheming bastard to make Arterius the elder pop off, that means something Caen."

"Like father, like son, essentially?"

"Don't get me wrong, he is very tactically smart. But don't think for a moment his position didn't come without a body-count of his competitors. A good friend of mine growing up had his career ended by Mareus when he disregarded a reckless direct order from Mareus during the War on Taetrus. Everyone thought Mareus was going to get bumped down in rank, but my friend was forced to resign. He . . . killed himself because he was so distraught over the black mark he left on his family."

"Spirits," I sighed, "I'm sorry Vell. Hopefully, whatever happens, none of us will end up near him for the foreseeable future. But if we do, I have your back."

"Thanks Caen," she replied as she came over and gave me a side-hug, "Thanks for being the older brother that actually listened to me for once."

"Anytime, Vell."

* * *

-In the calmer times of 2184, and on calmer tides . . .-

"It's not quite like Parthia, but it has its own appeals."

My thirty-four-year-old brother, Nasicus Pius, beamed as he showed off the balcony view of his new apartment on the Citadel, where you could see almost the whole station, above and around, from that very spot. Nasicus' dark black plating and white tattoos stood out strongly compared to his dark blue outfit. He had bright green eyes that never appeared strained or taxed, despite his busy life.

"It's not bad," I added, "You haven't done too bad for yourself."

"The perks of being a weapon designer for Cipirtine," he huffed as he took a seat at a small wooden table, and motioned for me to join him at another seat near him, "I was never the combat reveler type. You fit that mold much better than I ever could, Caen."

I laughed, "If that's what you want to call my effort, I won't protest."

"Oh come on," my brother scoffed, "You're in Blackwatch, and as an officer, by the Spirits' sakes! Give yourself some credit for once!"

"I haven't done much beyond get in, Nas."

"Don't you worry about that, brother," Nasicus said as he clenched his fist, "Now you're in the club that fights so much it makes war look like a cakewalk compared to peacetime."

"Sure, sure," I replied, waving him off, "Let's not talk about that. Leave is for not doing and talking about those kinds of things."

"You're right," Nasicus held his hands up, in mock defeat, "I shouldn't have steered the conversation that way."

"We're our father's sons, Nas."

"Isn't that the truth."

"What are you two boys talking about out here?"

That was the voice of Sabrina.

Sabrina was my brother's wife, a human who had spent a decent chunk of her life on Earth, but had moved on into the stars to find a new future for herself, and as a result, found my brother. A German farm girl finding a Turian weapons designer on the Citadel. Not everyone would be willing to hitch themselves to a 'merchant of death', but my brother was a different breed of Turian. Nasicus and Sabrina just . . . were meant to be together. It was amazing how the galaxy brought people together sometimes.

Sabrina stood a half a head below myself and Nasicus, and had shining blonde hair tied back in a simple tail. Her oval face was unblemished and just slightly browned from UV light exposure. Her dark blue eyes hinted at the deep, thoughtful mind behind them. Sabrina was wearing a bright blue dress as a sort of complement to Nasicus' look when she walked out to join us.

"Nothing in particular," Nasicus responded as Sabrina took a seat next to him, wrapping her arm around his waist.

"Well, I'm glad you decided to come and stay with us, Caen," Sabrina smiled, genuinely, "I'm always amazed by both of your abilities, I must say."

"Pah," I spat half-heartedly, shaking my head, "Nas is the one with the fucking crazy penthouse. I'm just a ground-pounder, Sabrina."

"I told him," Nasicus added, as he looked towards Sabrina who was chuckling at my persistent modesty, "He won't accept it."

"He gets it from your father," Sabrina replied.

"Couldn't have said it better myself," Nasicus raised his hands in triumph, feeling vindicated.

"Can we please, move on to something else?" I groaned.

"Yes, yes," Sabrina chuckled, "Our apologies."

"Consider it over and done with, Caen," My brother said as he got up out the seat, "How about some drinks, you two?"

"Any beer you have is fine with me," I nodded.

Sabrina quietly nodded as Nasicus hurried back off inside. "So how was the flight over from Palaven?"

"Not too bad," I answered, "We just finished a refresher course in urban combat scenarios, so I didn't have to go far to catch a ride. It was surprisingly quick this time around, guess everything's finally back up to speed after the whole small war with Saren and whatever the hell that thing was, here."

"Yeah, at last, it was a big clean up project, took a hell of a long time. We weren't too inconvenienced, but it was a little rough on Nas. He doesn't like commuting much at all anymore, and the whole rebuilding scheme made him pretty mad most nights."

"Fair enough," I said as Nasicus returned, with a beer for each of us.

My brother quickly handed out the goods and took his seat again, but not before he said the customary,

"Prost!"

We all took a small swig of our drinks and quickly turned our attention back to the conversation at hand.

"So, what is your plan for the future, Caen?" my brother inquired, more seriously this time around.

"Well, I'd like to ride out this Blackwatch job for a while and see where it goes. For my military career, it's probably my assignment ceiling. I don't think I'll ever get to a real high-ranking general officer position, even if I wanted to. I like being in the field more anyway, since it makes me feel useful in a firefight. I can't stand the idea of being stuck behind a screen telling other people to go and die."

"It's good to be cognizant of all that," Nasicus commented, "When I turned thirty and moved away from my active-duty posting in the Marines, I wasn't really thinking that far ahead. I mean I had liked tinkering and working on weapons, but it took a little bit for me to figure that was something I was willing to turn into my career. Luckily it paid off for me, in more ways than one."

"Yeah, lucky for you," Sabrina jabbed sarcastically, "Who knows what sort of high-strung maniac you would've ended up with otherwise."

"Yeah, I know," Nasicus responded in honest relief, but quickly laughed to cover it up, "It amazes me sometimes how it all comes together, you know?"

"I wouldn't really know," I added as I took a long swig from my beer. It had always irked me slightly that my brother had landed himself so well. Even during his days as a quartermaster for the 16th Marine Regiment, he was lauded for his efforts and was pretty well-known for pushing the boundaries of weapon modifications. I don't know why Nasicus acted like he didn't know that weapon design was what he wanted to do for his 'civilian' career.

On the other hand, I was terrified of life after my retirement from active-duty. I definitely wouldn't retire at thirty like Nasicus did. I would go until the Hierarchy forced me out.

"You'll find something, I'm sure of it," Sabrina said, trying to dissuade my fears, "There's always a lot of security firms hiring on the Citadel and Nas has his connections within Cipirtine, so if nothing else, I'm sure there's some way we could help you."

"And be here for the rest of my life?"

"That's not what I'm saying, Caen," Sabrina countered, "I'm saying that if nothing else pans out, we can help you. I have no doubts you'll make plenty of . . . connections because of Blackwatch once you get settled in. I know you told us to stop, but you're a really talented and resourceful person Caen, those traits don't go unnoticed. Four years until you're thirty is plenty of time."

_She sounds like mom._

"Well that's very kind of you," I admitted willingly this time, "Maybe one day I can have a place as nice as this one."

"Nothing's really too far away," Sabrina smiled as Nas wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in closer.

We all turned towards the view, soaking it all in, and basked in the warm silence as the Citadel hummed along. I watched the people and machines in a colorful and organized flurry make this unique place in the universe keep on existing so that one day . . . maybe I'd call it home too.

* * *

-September 29, 2186 CE -

After finishing my conversation with Vellia, not much else happened as the light-years of space passed us by in the Heraklion.

We all passed the time lounging around in the bunk room playing card games, mainly a few games I had picked up from spending time on Earth, and while some were familiar, others I spent more time explaining them rather than playing.

But eventually, Captain Quinlus stopped by and notified us that we were in the Trebia system and would begin the descent into Menae shorty. All of us took that as our cue to pack and head down to the cargo bay to get all of our gear ready for transport. We didn't say anything as we carried out our tasks. There was a weight on all of our shoulders, and we knew it wouldn't be lifted for a while. Once we had all of our combat gear together, we stood around in the bay and waited for the ship to land.

"What do you think the situation is gonna be like at Oracle?" Lucus asked as he clutched his sniper rifle across his chest.

"Probably a lot of action. I imagine they sent back the prospects to their old units, so it's going to be all the real hands on deck now."

"We're probably going to sit on our asses for a few days," Pago said, joining the conversation circle with Vellia following close behind, "And then comes the reckoning."

"I can't even begin to imagine what a fight on Menae would be like . . ." Vellia added as the ship shunted to a halt.

I chuckled as I looked to Vellia, "You won't have to, the Reapers will probably take care of that for you."

"What a relief!" Vellia responded, and we all shared a laugh as the loading ramp of the Heraklion lowered to reveal the chalky grey-white surface of Menae and the artificial, reflective silvers of Oracle base which rose above the large black landing pad and the Heraklion.

Waiting for us outside was the all-too-familiar face of Major Cosvus Falcus, my immediate superior. He was the one who had kept us stationed on Taetrus due to the assignment posting SNAFU, and when his demeanor drooped upon seeing us battered, it was obvious he felt even more guilty about it. Even though I knew there wasn't much he could've done to get us transferred out before the attack, it was nice that he genuinely felt like he had wronged us. His brown face and yellow face tattoos stood out against his midnight black Blackwatch armor.

_Now, we're home._

"Captain," Major Falcus said as we walked down the ramp to him, and we shared a quick handshake, "It's good to see you all in one piece. We expected the worst when we lost comms with Taetrus."

"It's going to take a lot more than that to kill us, sir," Vellia responded.

"That it is," Falcus said as he motioned for us to follow him inside Oracle base.

Compared to a lot of the stations on Menae, Oracle base was much larger and one of the most classified locations in Turian space.

And I'm going to take you inside.

Oracle is a double-ringed circular base, close to the northern pole of Menae. In size terms, Oracle ranked as the second-largest permanent installation on the moon, along with holding the largest active garrison. The entire building was covered in metallic silver shielding, as is most Turian military buildings, with the outer ring containing most of the living quarters, the main mess hall, and the majority of the team rooms. The inner ring was the more guarded and secretive area, with the briefing rooms, officers' quarters, intelligence and observation secure areas (much like the ones in the Spookhouse at the Had), the medical wing, as well as the most important area, the quartermaster's and supply rooms.

"We're not going in with the counter-attack force, but we're keeping busy." Falcus waved us through the security checkpoint, and we received a few friendly greetings from the door guards. Now in the inner ring, I could see why Falcus said that.

There were squads of Blackwatch troops coming and going from almost every room up and down the ring. No doubt some of them were going planet-side to help assist in the defensive planning.

"Where are you going to use us?" I asked as we sped up to a jog to keep up with Falcus.

"Well, I don't think we have any good reason to separate you all now, considering you fought your way out of Taetrus and lived to tell the tale. Right now, though, you all will be debriefed by our intel team. We need any information we can get our hands on regarding these bastards and how to fight them. At least Blackwatch can be prepared for the fight here, even if command is off trying to placate the masses right now."

_Now that's what I like to hear._

"Where's Colonel Gracchus?" Lucus asked.

"He's in Cipirtine for an emergency session of the Primarch's war council. Fedorian declared the Hierarchy to be at war yesterday, after Taetrus officially went dark. The Colonel will be back fairly soon, if that's what you're wondering. He's as eager for a fight as you all are, trust me on that."

After a further minute or so of walking, Falcus led us into a secure room and with some intel officers joining us not long after, we all took our seats in the scrubbed white room to begin the tedious process of a debrief.

We spent almost four hours walking through everything that happened to us on Taetrus, from first contact at the Had to our extraction at Spaedar. The whole time, we were barely asked any questions. The intel officers were too busy writing down our every word and translating them into actionable intel as quickly as they could. They did seem quite dismayed at the bleak picture we were painting.

I hoped it was better than going in blind.

Once we were finished, the intel officers rushed back to their center to start spreading the word.

"I know you guys are probably worn out to death, and probably need some recovery time. As of right now, Captain, your team is on alert and will have no other duties for the time being. Whatever you need to do to prepare yourselves before the fight, I suggest you do it. You may not have another opportunity for a while," Falcus said, giving us all a wave as he headed back out into the main hallway of the inner ring.

"That's it?" Vellia asked skeptically, "There has to be a catch."

"Maybe not," Pago said, crossing his arms in his seat, "They don't have the time or manpower to fuck with us right now. Better to leave us alone. It's not like we're going anywhere anytime soon."

"We could go see Chaos, see what new stuff he's got in," Lucus proposed.

"I need to get a replacement helmet anyway," I said, rising to my feet as the rest of the team quickly followed suit, "Let's go see the madman."

Chaos was the nickname of one of the beloved maniacs of the Turian military. If my brother was a magician with weapon design, then Chaos was a Spirit in flesh and blood. No one called him by his real name, Galvius Sulla. Despite being only a sergeant, his word on Oracle base was regarded as highly as Colonel Gracchus, which considering the talent walking around, that was saying something.

Chaos had enough clout to get an entire quarter of the wing reserved as a space to do his business, mainly building, modifying, and testing every bit of kit we took out into the field. He was a relentless psychopath determined to improve every tiny detail he could in our gear. Chaos was the one that built the retrofit for Lucus' Armax Punisher. The area was large enough to have indoor firing ranges, but not big enough for explosive testing, which he did outside only after he got in trouble for detonating plastic explosives for armor testing. But no one could say he didn't get results.

The large doorway to Chaos' domain had a large electronic sign above it which read:  
"CAUTION: LIVE WEAPONS ARE FIRED IN THIS AREA. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. CHAOS TAKES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR IDIOTS."

Once we walked through, the sounds of weapons discharging quickly filled the air. Over to our left, the firing ranges were full of Chaos' assistants test-firing weapons on ballistic dummies who were unfortunate enough to end up being acquisitioned by Chaos. To our right, was a large workbench area organized into a 'U' shape up against the right-side wall of the high-ceilinged room where three individuals were gathered around what looked like a Krysae anti-material rifle.

"I don't fucking care how many thermal clips you need to use to get the weapon calibrated," the scratchy, shrill voice of Chaos rang out, who was in the center of the three, "Go tell supply to quit complaining and give me what I need!"

Chaos stood at about average height for a Turian, and stood out, mainly for his pale white skin plating. His face was pretty well scarred and scratched from his many self-created brushes with death. It seemed as if there wasn't a single part of his head that was immune from his technological pursuits, as even his fringe was shorter than usual thanks to his experiments with expanding thermal clip capacity. Chaos' yellow eyes were attentive, but hyper-active as his mind processed through his seemingly endless to-do list. He also wore the trademark black armor of the Blackwatch, albeit with a massive red Turian skull painted on the chest plate.

"Roger that," one of them replied as he bumped his way through us.

"I'll start running the test firing," the other said as he hefted the Krysae up with both hands and jogged over to the firing range.

As his assistants left, Chaos noticed us coming in and immediately cheered up.

"Well, well, well," Chaos clapped, "Looks like the badass motherfuckers are finally back from gettin' some. How was business?"

"Booming," I replied with a chuckle, "And more's on the way. Probably going to be danger close in the near future."

"Huh," Chaos remarked as he looked us over, "You guys look like shit."

"Thanks genius," Lucus snarked, "Tell us something we don't know."

"Really, Lucus? I'm pretty sure that's the reason I got this job. Try again."

"I assume you got the word about the Reapers?" I asked, trying to end a conflict of so-called 'wits' before it even started.

"Affirmative," Chaos responded with a nod, crossing his arms, "It's why I have everyone here working at top speed right now. Our timeline just got shortened massively. Of course we have the planned counter-attack in a couple of days, but who knows, we may be burning our asses in the fire sooner than that if things go really bad."

"You got anything new for us?"

If Chaos could smile, I imagine this would be a moment when he'd be grinning like hell.

"Maybe. Let me show you."

We all walked over to Chaos' desk, which was covered in all sorts of random tech and mechanical bits, but Chaos directed our intention to several pairs of what looked to be like shoulder mounted thruster packs.

"Are those some of Armiger's thruster packs?" Pago seemed to know what we were all thinking at that moment.

" . . .Kind of," Chaos coyly responded as several loud explosions went off in the room some ways behind us, starling everyone slightly. But, Chaos seemed pleased with whatever the explosive results were and turned his attention back to the thrusters, "They're modified of course. Mostly the Armiger guys use these for horizontal movement, quick dodges and accelerating into an attack. That sort of thing. These are a bit different. I've increased the fuel flow rate into the thrusters and strengthened them overall as a result because the heat is pretty immense. Not only can you move horizontally like Armiger can, this can propel you vertically, at least a few meters. Unfortunately, I can't do much more with it because the fuel packs for these are pretty small and putting even more weight on doesn't make much sense."

"Fucking brilliant," Lucus commented, in awe of the equipment.

Chaos then turned to me for a moment, and then seemed perplexed by my face.

"What happened to your nose? I don't think it was gashed like that before."

"No, an explosion knocked me off balance and I shattered the visor on my helmet on a rock. Sliced me pretty good."

Chaos clicked his mandibles a few times as he thought about something, muttering to himself as he looked through a few storage lockers under his desks.

"Hold this," he said to Vellia, handing her what looked like a heavily modified receiver for a Phaeston.

Vellia grabbed it quickly as Chaos threw a few other things out, sending them bouncing and clattering onto the floor.

"Here it is, the motherfucker," Chaos grunted as he pulled out what looked to be a normal Turian combat helmet, but there were a few significant changes to the overall design.

"This is a prototype I worked on a while back for Armax, but they didn't adopt it." He placed the helmet on a specialized rack so it could sit in a position like it would on one of our heads.

"I reduced the size of the viewing slit, so it doesn't have that bit where it goes down from your eyes to your mouth," he said pointing to a dark, metallic silver piece of metal that seemed a bit out of place, but was securely attached to the helmet, "That piece is reinforced Titanium. Costs a lot to mass produce that bit, so makes sense why they didn't want to do it."

"But there's some internal stuff you might like, so try it on," Chaos said, picking the helmet up and handing it over.

"You sure this thing's not gonna take my head off?" I asked sarcastically.

"Yes, quit being such a damn baby."

I placed the helmet on and found that I was in total darkness.

_Oh great, I'm blind again._

"I can't see shit, Chaos."

"Just hold on, it has to boot up first."

Blue lights quickly flashed in front of me as the world around me came back into view. It almost felt like I wasn't wearing a helmet at all.

"How's it looking?"

"Pretty nice actually," I said reaching up to the helmet and adjusting it slightly, "I have no field-of-view hindrance at all."

"Well you can thank a couple of pieces for that. First, I actually moved the front of the helmet back so it's a bit closer to your eyes, that way your eyes don't freak out as much that you're looking through a screen."

"Why was it dark at first?"

"That's the second bit. Technically you're not only looking through a view slit right now."

"What?"

"You're looking through a combined image, the reason it's not delayed is because the base image is what you see out of the viewport, there's actually a camera embedded in the helmet right below the view slit, which is protected by the Titanium plate I added. So everything you see after about fifteen to twenty degrees down is the camera coming in. I ran some tests with it and it works fine with every optic system we've got."

"That's a hell of an upgrade."

"Tell that to Armax," Chaos snarked, "There's one last bit I need to turn on."

"What's that?"

"Well since you guys have been complaining we haven't done internal night-vision and HUD helmet upgrades yet; this is where they've been laying around."

With another series of flashes there were now all sorts of data readings, for my weapons, personal vitals and shields, readouts on the environment, and tracking systems which were highlighting all the people moving in the room.

"You can toggle night-vision and thermals from your omni-tool, the helmet automatically links with the user once it's initialized."

I took a moment to flip through the settings and found myself a bit blinded from the light all around, but impressed all the same.

"You think you can upgrade all of our helmets like this one, within a week?" I asked, removing the helmet and returning to my primeval vision.

"Maybe. I can for sure make two more in a few days. I'd need another one of those cameras to make a third."

"Is there a place where one could . . . 'requisition' one of those cameras?" Lucus asked as he rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

Chaos laughed, "Maybe, but that's only speculative, of course."

"Just let me know."

"Sure, and Lucus, why don't you come try this new weapon I've been working on."

"You had me at 'try this new weapon'."

We all laughed as we headed over to Chaos' firing range to find the individual tasked with the Krysae rifle, who laid the weapon down on the firing bay table and turned to us.

"It passed the first run with flying colors, sir."

"Yeah, I heard," Chaos clapped with joy as he pointed to the rifle, "Give it a go, Lucus."

"What's different about this?" Lucus asked, looking over the weapon in his arms, "It looks almost exactly the same as a regular Krysae, just . . . bigger."

"Precisely," Chaos responded with a firm point of his finger, "This thing is really upgraded. It doesn't shoot the regular AP rounds any more."

"Well, what does it shoot then?"

"Proximity fused, armor-piercing projectiles."

"How big's the bang?"

"You heard it earlier."

"Spirits," Lucus muttered as he shouldered the rifle, aiming it downrange at an already horribly maimed Turian-shaped dummy.

"It has a two-stage trigger," Chaos continued, "The first stage focuses the internal optic from two to ten times magnification. The second stage is pretty light so be ready."

A second later, the Krysae rocked up vertically in his hands as the invisible projectile impacted almost immediately into the target dummy, sending the dummy and the next nearest one to it flying back towards the end of the firing range.

"I tell you what, damn, that's history-making!"

Chaos cackled at Lucus' answer. He couldn't be happier at that level of compliment, "Imagine when you put some of those poor Reaper bastards on the end of that sort of hurt."

"I'd be glad to give it a field test, just for you, Chaos," Lucus pleaded, giving his best pitiful expression he could muster.

"Go ahead, it's pending official adoption right now."

"This is why I love this job," Lucus hopped with joy as he gave Chaos a slap on the back, "You did it again Chaos."

"Hmmph," the tech master grunted as he looked over all of us, "Who knows if it will be enough."

* * *

**AN/: And with that, the countdown to chaos on Menae ticks ever onward. I made some big leaps with this chapter character-wise. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, in the end. Please feel free to leave your reviews and let me know what you think, as always. **

**Until next time,**

**Esquire 6.**


	5. The Lonely or the Brave?

**AN/: Well, hello there everybody! Been a while since I stuck my face out around here. I've been through a little rough-patch writing wise but eventually came back around to get this chapter done. Rest of the AN is at the end. Enjoy.**

* * *

"_**Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun."**_

― _**Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War**_

* * *

**Chapter 5: The Lonely or the Brave?**

-October 4, 2186 CE-

Loneliness is a topic that many of us soldiers don't like to talk about, for a lot of reasons that may seem obvious at face value. But it's something that a soldier constantly faces in the long hours that are spent off the battlefield, either in transit, or during a resting period before the fight starts all over again in earnest.

Although the braggarts would never say it, war is ninety percent waiting, and ten percent combat. Learning how to deal with the waiting is where the battle with loneliness comes up. And that war, is one that is a full-time struggle.

I struggled a lot myself in the early days of my career. I didn't have friends at all for the most part, and I was so enveloped in preparing myself for combat and duty in every aspect that I neglected my social life. It really hurt me a lot. Other soldiers in my unit back then thought I was strange, a loner that didn't really mesh well with regular Legion detachments. My commanding officers liked me a lot, but quickly realized that I didn't have the ability to mesh with a unit totally, at least not yet. My combat abilities, along with my determination and drive, were good enough to earn their recommendation to try out for Blackwatch. As soon as I went through selection, I immediately found myself among like-minded people. One of them, was Salmi Herrox.

She, to this day, is arguably the kindest friend I ever had.

"What are you thinking about, Caen?" Salmi asked me as I glared out of the window in my room at Oracle, slightly turning myself back and forth in my rotating desk chair.

"I . . . was just thinking about old times. That's all."

My room was a fairly decent size. Big enough for a decent sized cot, a couple of drawers, a small self-contained bathroom, a small closet, and my desk and terminal. My room had a pretty good view out to Palaven. You could just about see the lights of the ships flying around the major cities planetside.

Salmi grimaced slightly, her dark grey face and blue tattoos moving as she cast her head down. "Yeah . . . I remember that quiet kid among the group. It felt like your soul was just . . . weighed down then."

"It still does feel that way."

"But I think it's a different kind now, Caen. More weight by responsibility, rather than just your typical doom and gloom."

I chuckled, "I can't be that way anymore, especially around my team. That's just asking for a disaster to happen."

"You still just feel like you're just floating on alone out there with no one caring that you're around, Caen?" Now it was my turn to droop my head, all the while giving my trademark back of the neck nervous-tick neck scratch. "What is it that you're still afraid of?"

"Salmi, I don't know if I can ever really explain it honestly."

"Well, at least try me, for once," Salmi replied cheerfully. Something about her attitude was just infectious to everyone that ended up around her. Which was probably why she was already married and had the most-picture perfect off-duty life you could imagine.

"It's just been bugging me my whole life, Salmi. I feel like no matter what I do, it's just not good enough. I'm not special enough, talented enough, or even good enough to really make a mark anywhere. Sometimes I wonder why I even got to where I am now. I don't feel like I'm really as talented as everyone says I am."

Salmi sighed. She had heard something similar to this complaint several times before. I always said that I couldn't explain it, then I'd give a fairly similar explanation to the one above. I had a feeling that she was probably tired of hearing the same thing over and over again, but she stuck around and always listened to it, like a true friend would.

"Is it because of your father?" she asked.

"Umm . . . well I don't know. We don't really talk much. Not even when I was at home either, to be honest. I mean, he was a merc, but he never pushed me to do anything. He just made sure I didn't get into trouble and that I got home every night. Beyond that, he didn't really seem to care about me that much."

"Sounds like you have some of him in you. Especially with how you oversaw things back with the Dagger teams on Taetrus," Salmi chuckled, turning slightly where she sat to let her head rest in her right hand.

"Yeah, my brother and his wife said that I was like him a little while ago."

"Have you talked to him recently?"

"No. I asked my brother to talk to him and my mother about getting off of Palaven before the invasion hits. Last I heard, my brother said that he agreed and they were going to stay with my brother on the Citadel. Usually he's pretty stubborn about not giving up his turf, but I think it was really for mom. I doubt she'd really last long in such a hellish environment."

"Maybe your father did it because he knew the information came from you, and he trusts your judgment. Did you ever consider that?"

". . . no, I hadn't considered that. I don't think he'd really consider my opinion _that_ highly. I always though he liked Nasicus more because he got out of the Hierarchy and went private sector. My father isn't the biggest fan of the Hierarchy."

"What did he think about Taetrus?"

"Oh spirits. My father thought, and I quote, that 'Facinus were some of the dumbest motherfuckers in the entire galaxy, and they would be lucky if they weren't totally eradicated within six months.'"

"So your father didn't really disagree with what you were doing?"

"I don't know if _I_ necessarily agreed with what we were doing, Salmi."

"Fair enough," she replied as she glanced for a moment towards the doorway. Expressing an opinion like that was strictly off the record and would never leave the room. "Did he ever send you anything?"

"My mother sent care packages occasionally. Dad, he just would send weird letters telling me tips about things and that I better do them or I'd get my head blown off or end up with some other grievous bodily injury."

"Was any of it helpful?"

I laughed, "It was stuff I'd already been taught in Blackwatch training, a lot of practical things. Stuff the regulars wouldn't know about."

"At least he's worried about you."

"Feels more like nagging, to be honest."

"That may be the only way he can express it, you know. He may not just be able to just outright say he's worried. He probably feels like he's in the exact shoes you are right now. He has to be the rock for your family, and he can't exude any sort of weakness."

"Makes sense," I replied, with a sigh, "Sorry you're playing counselor for me again, Salmi."

"Oh, I don't mind, Caen. We've known each other for a long time. I know you can get worn down without someone to talk to."

"Well, whatever it means coming from me, Salmi, thank you."

"You're welcome," Salmi chirped back, clicking her mandibles.

"When are you heading out?" I asked, slightly dejected at the prospect of losing my confidant.

"Tomorrow, at dawn Cirpirtine time. Telus and I got tasked with a special mission from Gracchus, direct from the Primarch. We're supposed to be official liaison officers with the other Council races. Apparently there's supposed to be a big rendezvous between everyone soon in neutral space. Fedorian wants to start a counter-attack ASAP."

"You think it could work?"

"No idea, Caen. It's going to take a miracle for any of us to get out of this war with the Reapers alive."

"Don't I know it. Getting off of Taetrus was a nightmare."

The door to my office opened in a flash to Lucus standing there clutching at least a dozen ration packets in his arms.

"I think we're good to go for me to start working on this," Lucus said before his eyes turned towards Salmi who was sitting across from me on my cot.

"Oh hey, Salmi!" Lucus said happily, "How've you been?"

"I've been alright, Lucus. How about you?"

"Well, not too bad now, since we got off Taetrus, I guess. But hey, I'm doing a Ramen boil tonight, I got the broth already going for a while now, you want in?"

"For real?" Salmi eyes widened at the news, "That was the best part about being with you guys on Taetrus, those Ramen nights were to die for. Damn right, I want in!"

"Well, we've got more than enough to go around, so you're welcome to join us in the team room later. I had to, uh . . . 'borrow' a portable cook-top, so keep it quiet, alright Salmi?"

"They'll get nothing out of me," Salmi whispered with a nod.

"Good," Lucus said as he looked back over to me, "All good with you Caen?"

"Affirmative," I answered firmly, "Just make sure to get some of that spicy sauce that I like."

"Got you covered already," Lucus winked.

"Good, to your station, Lieutenant," I stated with a slightly mocking salute, leaving Lucus laughing heartily as he headed on his way to the team room.

"It's been a while since I've seen Lucus," Salmi said with a hint of warmness in her voice, "He hasn't changed much at all."

"Yeah, he's still the same. One hell of a sniper who can't seem to shut up."

"That's Lucus alright," Salmi said as she glared back out of the window past me, "But I heard you have two new additions to your team. Got a full fireteam now?"

"Yeah, Pago and Vellia. They were with Lucus and I at the Had. Wouldn't have made it off-planet without them."

"I heard Vellia is quite the soldier."

"Oh, yeah, she's really good. Former Cabal, biotic-user and a damn good shot too. She's been in my battle-pair since the shooting started. It's been nice to have another close-quarters specialist again."

"What about . . . Pago, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. Pago's our heavy weapons specialist. Took down two harvesters on Taetrus."

"You mean those Reaper-possessed worm-necks?"

"Yeah, they're bad news. Take a lot to bring down, and then once you do, they explode in this big fireball. And they have cannons on them now."

"Spirits . . ."

"That's what I thought too."

It was silent for a few moments until Salmi spoke back up, "So they're keeping you all together?"

"Yeah, for a little while it seems," I replied as I glanced at my omni-tool which was flashing with an alert from Lucus. "Food's almost ready, we should start heading that way."

"Lead the way, Caen."

The team room was now occupied by about ten or so Blackwatch regulars who had been initiated into the Ramen boil ritual, whether on Taetrus or here at Oracle. It was a sort of underground club meeting where we could all get together and shoot the breeze without worrying about the consequences.

Chaos was among the regulars. I had personally initiated him into the ritual once I had earned my permanent officer position within the Blackwatch as a sort of repayment for all the work he had done on my gear. He was a much different individual outside of the lab, much quieter and much calmer. I liked talking to him a lot, just in general.

When I walked in the door accompanied by Salmi, Chaos was impatiently standing near the doorway, obviously waiting for me to show up.

"Caen, Salmi," Chaos nodded, "You both doing alright?"

"Yeah, Chaos," Salmi replied before I had the chance, "Just trying to prepare myself for not seeing Palaven for a long time."

Chaos grunted back, "Fair."

There was large wooden table in the middle of the room which had lots of chairs surrounding it, and lots of disposable tableware and condiments all over that Lucus had managed to "acquire" during his scrounging during the day.

Vell was in one of the corners of the room talking to another ex-Cabal, Fenilus Rylos. He had been a regular fixture in the Blackwatch for a while now, and upon seeing their friendly conversation, it definitely appeared like he maybe had some part in getting Vell into the unit.

Pago was off talking to Lucus and few of their cadre, a couple of survivors of the Dagger teams on Taetrus who had been brought into this ritual during the war. Proculus "Rocco" Remirius, Desicus "Dizzy" Faustulus, and Quintilian "Quincy" Linculus were their names if I remember right.

"So, what's up, Chaos? Any news?" I asked as I motioned for him to take a seat next to me at the table.

"No, not really," Chaos winced as he took his seat.

"You ok?"

"Yes, yes, I'm fine, I just got a little too close to some detonations earlier."

"A little?"

"Fine. Much too close. But back to your question."

"Whatever makes you feel better, Chaos."

Chaos grumbled slightly, but eventually continued, "Pretty much everything has been quiet, everyone's on edge waiting to see how the counter-attack pans out. It's been two days with almost no news, and pretty much, whether this thing works or not determines our chances for the rest of this war. We're gambling almost everything we've got at this point to try and make this work. But even then, I really do fear it's not going to be anywhere near strong enough to make a real impact."

"That bad, huh?"

"Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we're fighting here within four days."

"Well, that's something I guess."

"It's my opinion, and I'm not going to lie to you to make you feel better about it."

"Which is why we like having you around, Chaos."

"Pah, you just like having nice gear."

"That's just a bonus."

"Oh, _suuure_," he half-heartedly cooed and eventually broke into a laugh.

I laughed with him, "Hell of a time we live in, huh?"

"Hell of a time."

"Ok everybody! Time to dig in!" Lucus shouted as he shuffled over to the table with a large black cooking pot, with steam pouring out of the top. Everyone hurried over to make themselves a couple of bowls of ramen each, and add whatever fixings they wanted to give it their own spin and flavor. I myself had really gotten into shoyu sauces that my brother had introduced to me at restaurants on the Citadel, and I had taken a few bottles of it with me wherever I was stationed, which Lucus kept an eye on for me.

Although humans said dextro-ramen didn't quite have the taste of the real wheat based ramen back on Earth, it was more than good enough for us. It was a wonder compared to most of our rations. We had to hoard whatever dextro-ramen rations we could get out hands on to save up for nights like this.

But, deep down, all of us knew this would probably be one of the last nights we'd ever get a chance to do be together like this again.

After we finished putting our food together and taking our seats, I stood up to give the customary toast.

"Glad all of you could make it. As you easily could've guessed this is probably the last time we'll get a chance to have one of these together, so enjoy it.

What is our duty?"

"To protect, uphold, and defend the Hierarchy," everyone responded.

"What shall we give?"

"Our abilities, our time, and our lives."

"What shall we sacrifice?"

"Everything."

* * *

-October 6, 2186 CE-

Chaos had been exactly right in his worries.

The counter-attacks(the Hierarchy had seemingly played into the sunken cost fallacy and thought it was an even better idea to attack twice) into the Mactare system had failed, and the Reapers had pushed through the Trebia relay to attack Palaven itself.

Mareus had been right too. The attempts at maneuver warfare had failed in the face of the overwhelming firepower of the Reapers.

Now, it was all or nothing.

Death or glory, as they say.

The Reapers had begun the ship combat in earnest over Palaven and throughout the Trebia system. For now, the ground attacks had been prevented by excellent marksmanship by both the ships and the ground based anti-air crews. For the most part, Blackwatch was sitting in wait ready to spring from their positions to begin the fighting on the ground.

My fireteam hadn't officially gone active until we were called into an emergency briefing by Colonel Gracchus.

Olix Gracchus was the epitome of the old, wily Blackwatch veteran that most aspired to be. A tall, imposing presence, but not intimidating to the point of fault. His light brown face was pretty much spotless, save for his trademark dagger-like tattoos. Gracchus had reputation for good luck in combat, which was exceedingly rare among Turian special forces troops. But, in part, that "luck" was due to his meticulous nature and overly compulsive attention to detail. He knew intrinsically what to focus on and what to ignore, and how to turn around and organize an attack or defense plan based on that process accordingly.

It was hard to find anyone who didn't respect Gracchus.

Those who didn't . . . paid for it eventually.

"Colonel," I said as my team entered his office and saluted, "What's the situation?"

"Fucked up, as I'm sure you're aware. We've had a cruiser crash on Menae, the PFS Draccio."

"What's are the reported losses?" Vellia asked.

"As far as we know it's a total write-off, crew went down with the ship. But, I've been ordered to send a team to check it out. And you guys are it."

"Where's the Draccio's wreckage, sir?" I inquired, as motioned to Pago and Lucus to grab some extra gear in case we ran into survivors.

"It's not far, only about ten clicks to the north from our position here, inside the proving grounds area, the Garden. I'll send the data to your squad's omni-tools."

"What are our orders sir?"

"If there are survivors evacuate them and get them to safety. Anything in there that's hostile, kill it. This may be a trap to start their ground offensive on Menae, so we'll have both gunship and artillery support on standby to assist if necessary."

"Roger that sir." Vell and I saluted Gracchus again, and Gracchus hesitated for a moment before returning it.

"Something wrong sir?" I inquired, lowering my arm slowly.

"Never did I think it would come to this. Fighting on Menae. Be careful out there, Pius. We can't afford to lose a team that's as experienced as yours."

"You know I will sir. Those bastards are going to regret fucking with us."

"I hope you're right."

Vell and I hurried out of Gracchus' office feeling a bit more unsure about ourselves, as Pago and Lucus hurried to the quartermaster. If Gracchus was that rattled over the Reapers getting this close to home, I could only imagine what rest of the regular troops were feeling.

As Vell and I arrived at the north entrance to Oracle, where Pago and Lucus met up with us a minute or two later after getting their heavy weapons, we did a check of each other's gear to make sure we were ready for contact. Once everyone's equipment passed muster, we headed out the large entryway, with the reinforced metal door sliding open to let us pass. The outer ring surrounding the Oracle base was now much more heavily reinforced, with machine gun nests and pre-fab barricades covering almost every inch of the perimeter, as well as a mix of Blackwatch and regular forces guarding and patrolling the area. We broke off into a run as our new helmets marked the location of the crash site, which was covered in the distance by a large, jagged formation of rocks, canyons, and plateaus. This was an area we were immensely familiar with.

The Garden of the Spirits.

The Garden was an area that Blackwatch trainees grew to know over the countless grueling exercises that were conducted there during the intensive training program after passing the initial "hell weeks". It was rough, unforgiving, and difficult to navigate.

But nothing we couldn't handle.

As we reached the edge of the garden, which led to steep drop off into a fairly deep canyon, all of us activated our newly acquired thruster packs, and took a running leap off into the canyon. After falling down for what seemed like an eternity, with the light from the sun and the battles above us slowly fading, the thrusters automatically kicked in, slowing us down to a halt just a few inches above the ground, and then cut out, softly placing us at the bottom.

"Man, I wish we had these in training," Lucus said as he un-holstered his Punisher.

"Don't we all," Vell replied as she took point, heading due north-west, "This way should be the shortest route. We'll head through the caves, it's maybe only a five to ten minute run to the crash-site."

"Copy that," I added as I motioned for us to move forward, "Lead the way, Vell."

"Roger."

I turned on my helmet's night vision which illuminated the chasms of the Garden in a bright green hue. I held my Phaeston up in front of me, ready for any possible threats that could be waiting for us. Our trek through the Garden wouldn't be rushed, I wasn't going to lose anyone over being sloppy and letting our guard down.

We reached the entrance to the cave system within a minute or so, and Vell did a preliminary check, and then lit a flare which lit up my night vision to a blinding level. She threw the flare deep into the cave, and after the light elicited no reaction, Vell waved us forward to head inside.

The caves were a big part of why the Garden was so treacherous to navigate. Anyone who ventured inside had to be wary of getting ambushed. But the ambushes themselves were dangerous even for the ambushers, demonstrated by the numerous trainees over the years that had died from being careless with their explosives and ended up buried under so much rubble that there was almost nothing left of them by the time we could blast their bodies out. The Garden taught us discipline, and by the Spirits, it was an unforgiving teacher.

As we ventured further into the caves, eventually passing the flare, a deep pit seemed to be forming in my stomach, the fears of training and the unease of something or someone always watching your every move returned all at once. It was very eerie to be back in these rocky, lifeless caves. They seemed to be even more unfriendly and hostile than they already were.

But none of us had anything to say. We were all ready for the job at hand. That was what all that unpleasant training had prepared us for.

Then all of sudden, Vell raised her fist. We could all hear the moving and shaking of rocks further down into the caves.

_She must have seen something._

"What have you got Vell?" I whispered as the squad took a knee.

"I don't know. I think I saw . . ."

"What was it?" I asked.

"A giant monster."

"A what?" Lucus replied.

"You heard what I said," Vell spat.

"What did it look like?" I asked again, hoping for a more concrete answer.

" . . . "

"Vell," I said, cocking my head in concern.

" . . . "

"VELL!" I yelled, as I walked next to her and shook her shoulder.

"It looked like a bastardized version of _us._"

"Wait, you mean . . ." Pago started before Vell cut him off.

"Yes. Looks like the Reapers used everyone on Taetrus to make some upgrades."

"Well, _shit_." Lucus swore.

"Can you see it now, Vell?" I asked, as I attempted to peer into the dark void beyond our NV range.

"No. It went back away from us as far as I can tell."

"Well, let's keep moving, you keep an eye out, Vell. Stay frosty, everyone."

We all continued our trek forwards, albeit a bit slower now that Vell had might as well have seen demons take real form in front of her.

"I've got movement!" Lucus yelled, "At eleven o'clock, something just went into the left-branch of the fork up ahead."

Pago grew incensed at Lucus' disregard of stealth, and quickly shushed him. Pago then whispered angrily, "Will you _please_ shut the fuck up?!"

"Which one are we supposed to be heading through, Vell?" I calmly stated. I was hoping that leading by example would get everyone back in order.

"The right one, but we better pray that bastard isn't sitting there waiting to pounce on us," she replied.

All of our weapons snapped to the passageway and we slowed even further as we gingerly approached. My motion tracker wasn't picking up anything. But I could feel the ground rumbling now.

I saw for a brief moment further down the passageway the reflection of light from a pair of eyes, and for a brief moment I could see whatever the thing's body was, a massive hulking piece of armored flesh with massive claw-like arms.

There's always a moment in every battle where you finally realize the gravity of the situation of how crazy and scary it is. For most battles, you'd experience it afterwards and kind of laugh about it. On rare occasions, it would happen during the battle, and you'd want to just about to shit your pants.

This was one of those shit your pants kind of moments.

And all I could do was yell,

"RUN FOR IT!"

All of us activated our thruster packs not a moment too soon as the bastardized turian smashed through the rocks of the opposite fork in the cave, starting a cave-in.

"DO NOT STOP! Keep moving! Keep moving!" I yelled as I glanced back over my shoulder. I could clearly see the monster bounding up the path after us.

"Pago, with me, turn and fire!"

"Copy that!"

Pago and I, in an instant, turned around and opened fire, illuminating the tunnel with countless bright flashes as our weapons fire rates accelerated higher with prolonged bursts. I wasn't sure we were doing much damage as it neared closer every passing second, despite landing a lot of hits.

"Vell, Lucus, cover us and switch!"

"You got it!" Lucus replied as Pago and I turned and took off running towards Lucus and Vell's position further along the tunnel in the cave.

"How much longer do we have to go, Vell?" I shouted as Pago and I sprinted past the other two members of our squad, who were firing incessantly at the chasing Reaper.

"Not far! Around another klick and we're out!"

"Good! Let's get this fucker off of us!"

Once we were a good distance away, we repeated the process again, with Pago and I providing covering fire as Vell and Lucus caught back up to us.

But then, things went from bad to worse.

The Reaper smashed into a wall causing the whole place to start shaking. The quaking knocked Lucus off balance and sent him tumbling into the ground. Vell turned for a moment to start heading back towards Lucus, but Lucus wasn't having any of it.

"Keep running, Vell!"

Lucus bolted up to his feet and threw his rifle aside, activating both of his omni-blades, which glowed red hot in the darkness, illuminating the brutish monstrosity that was almost right on top of him, letting out a gutteral roar.

"Well then, why didn't you say so?" Lucus growled.

Lucus drew back his arms and activated his jump packs, sending him hurtling directly into the Brute. Lucus hit the monster with so much force that he managed to stagger it and send it tumbling into the ground, but Lucus also went along with it.

I motioned for Vell and Pago to hurry back to Lucus' position and to resume firing. The tracers starting flowing thick and heavy, streaking through the claustrophobic cave with speed and purpose, smacking into the struggling Brute as it attempted to reorientate itself after its tumble down to reality.

Lucus didn't wait to resume his attack, launching himself up onto the exposed neck area. He grasped onto one of the exposed Brute's ribs and began to repeatedly stab into the monster's neck, which only made it howl even louder in anger. Once Vell, Pago, and I got close, Vell got right in under the Brute's stomach, and using her extended Cabal poison blades, latched onto a loose armor plate on the Brute's underside, ripped it clean off, and then proceeded to skewer the Brute completely, sending greyish guts spewing down onto the cold, cave floor. The Brute began screaming and throwing its arms around in desperation, and managed to throw off Lucus into the cave wall.

Not wanting the dying Brute to cause any more damage, I overcharged my thermal clip for my Phaeston, and using my omni-tool to grab into the Brute's flesh, I pulled down the Brute's head, shoved my rifle into one of its eye sockets and pulled the trigger.

The Brute's head quickly evaporated into a pinkish mist as my rifle quickly discharged its full thermal clip. The Brute's body collapsed lifelessly into the cave floor, with Vell scurrying out from under it in the nick of time. The monster was finally defeated.

"_Fuck_," Vell sighed as she caught her breath, "I am not looking forward to fighting more of those things."

"Neither am I," Lucus coughed from behind us.

_Ah, shit._

Lucus had propped himself up against the wall in a seated position, and he glared at me as I started looking him over.

"I'm just a little roughed up, give me a minute and I'll be good," Lucus pleaded.

"Yeah, after I give you a dose of medi-gel, your back is bruised up pretty bad," I replied.

"I don't need it."

"Oh don't start this now, you big baby."

"What? I'm fine, I don't need it."

"Yeah, you don't have a choice in this, bud," I spat.

I gave him the injection of medi-gel, and Lucus groaned in pain, clenching his fist.

"Spirits, this medi-gel stuff is bad news."

"Yeah, but it works. And next time Lucus, tell me what stupid thing you're going to do _before_ you do it. Ok?"

"It worked didn't it?"

"Sure it did," I answered half-heartedly as I offered my hand to the sniper, which he clasped as I pulled him to his feet, "That won't be the last fight with one of those . . . Brutes."

"At least we won the first one," Lucus snarked, clearly somewhat pleased with himself.

"Hell yeah, we did," Vell said as she motioned for us to follow, "But let's get out of here before we have to earn another victory down here."

All of us silently concurred as we continued through the caves on to the Draccio's crash site. Lucus picked up his previously discarded Punisher rifle as he took a glance back towards the Brute's mangled body. He paused for maybe a few seconds before his attention returned to the present and he hurried to catch back up with us.

But at last, some respite had come.

We were out of the caves.

The light from Trebia greeted us like a long lost friend, but also showed us the horrors of the battlefields we would soon become well-acquainted with.

The Draccio had come apart on impact in an area of craters surrounded by large, daunting plateaus, that we all collectively knew as the "Graveyard". This had been an area where we had cut our teeth in mock combat, with most of our objectives being placed in the vicinity of the Graveyard. By some twist of fate, this wasteland had become a real graveyard for the unfortunate ones that went down with the Draccio.

Much of the body of the cruiser had been totally shattered, as parts of the hull were tossed about like a child had come and made a mess of them. There was only one major part of the ship, what appeared to be the bridge and the bow, that still seemed intact. There were bodies of the ship's crew intermittently spread out in the wreckage. What was really puzzling though is upon further inspections of the dead, something immediately seemed wrong.

"Uh, Caen, not all of these guys died from the impact. They've got holes and burn marks from small-arms fire," Vell said, her voice wavering as she crouched over the bodies, trying to put the pieces together.

"You thinking what I'm thinking?" Pago asked, turning to me. He was glancing around in all directions, keeping an eye for any possible targets.

"Yeah," I responded, "Lucus, find somewhere to set up an overwatch position. Pago, you go with him. Contact Gracchus and tell him what we've found so far."

"On it!" Lucus replied in an instant. The sniper took off running to my 8 o'clock towards one of the lower plateaus that had a smoother incline where he could make himself at home. Pago tailed him, leaving only Vell and I to survey the damage.

"You think having less people in there is going to be better, Caen?" Vell almost whispered as she finished a small prayer over the bodies she had been inspecting.

"It's gonna be tight since the bridge is probably FUBAR from the crash. Having less people gives us more room to maneuever in there, and good luck having Lucus and Pago be as effective with handguns. Not happening."

"Fair enough." Vell finally returned to her to feet and we broke into a jog over towards the bridge.

"Caen, it's Pago."

"Go ahead."

"Gracchus copies all on our findings. He has mortars on emergency standby, callsign Bonedrum. They are cleared to fire on any targets we come across that are within the Garden, including danger close. How copy?"

"I copy all. We're moving into the bridge momentarily. Keep us posted up there. Out."

The section of the broken Draccio was still smoldering as Vell and I approached, weapons raised. All sorts of electronic equipment was hanging out and sparking in some places where the innards had been completely exposed by the impacts.

"Motion tracker isn't picking up anything," Vell said quietly as she climbed over a piece of the Draccio's hull into the underbelly of the cruiser.

"Don't know if I really trust that anymore," I added, following suit behind Vell, as the area in front of us flickered from the occasional spark from damaged wires and hardware.

I tapped my helmet, loud enough for Vell to hear, to signal to switch back to night-vision. The lower level of the Draccio looked far away from its better days, with crates and supplies scattered everywhere.

_Going to be hard to stay quiet here._

"Watch your step," I whispered to Vell as we gingerly proceeded forward into the tightening hallway.

Each step we took over whatever debris happened to be lying around seemed even more amplified than usual. All my thoughts were profanities laced with desperate hopes that if there was anything above us, they were deaf as shit and didn't know we were coming.

_If they still are here, the Reapers better start learning how to fight a ground war._

Vell raised her left hand up away from her Scimitar shotgun and pointed to her ten o'clock in front of her.

"Stairway."

We slowly wheeled around to better angle ourselves to check up towards the exit of the stairs to the bridge and couldn't see anything moving. There was a lot of light coming from up topside.

I motioned to Vell to move up to the bridge, and I followed closely behind. I glanced over my shoulder a few times to make sure we weren't being followed, but like everywhere else in the wreckage, it seemed like just another abadoned disaster zone.

As soon as Vell entered the bridge, she stopped and looked up towards something on the ceiling.

"So that's how they got in."

Once I got up to the bridge level, I saw immediately what had grabbed her attention.

There was a massive circular cut, done by what appeared to be a high-power laser with a diameter of at least six or seven meters. Whatever pod they had used to attach to it was long gone, most likely destroyed in the crash. But there was something else startling among the remnants of the Draccio's command and control center. There were strange bodies of what looked to be augmented turians with over-exaggerated crests.

I found one of these modified corpses lying on the floor near the inactive galaxy map. In its arms was a Phaeston rifle, and the usual Turian armor was covered in new dark grey plates in a couple of areas, particularly the shoulders. What was most shocking were the eight viewing holes that now covered this thing's face.

"Spirits," I groaned. I could feel a pit growing in my stomach at the thought that one of my people was turned into . . . this. I let my head droop in agony at the countless thousands that had and were going through the agonizing torture that the Reapers forced on them.

_Watch over them, and carry their souls softly onward._

Vell rested a hand on my left shoulder as I lamented their fate, "There's nothing we can do for them now, Caen."

"Even more of our people are going to be turned into these things, Vell."

"Not if we can help it."

"It's pretty smart, I must admit. They're covering all their bases to win this war." I grimaced slightly as I stood back up, "Looks like there's nothing really left here to worry about. Whatever the Reapers wanted, they took already and didn't leave any prisoners."

"Time to call for a ride out?"

"Yeah, I don't want stick around long enough for more of those monstrosities to find out we're here and slaughter us. Pago!"

"Send it, Captain!"

"There's nothing here, radio us in an evac shuttle. I'm not going back in those fucking caves again."

"Roger that, I'm on it."

I turned back to the lifeless Turian reaper, "Do you think we should take a body to Oracle? Let the eggheads look at it?"

Vell shrugged, "If you think that's a good idea. I'm not squad leader, you know."

I mustered a chuckle at Vell's snide remark, but eventually responded, "They may be able to figure out what their weaknesses are or something. At least it means we don't leave empty handed."

"Whatever flies your frigate, Caen."

I hefted the body over my shoulder as we headed out of the Draccio's remains. Compared to before, it might have sounded like we were falling over everything, since now we had no qualms with moving and throwing debris and waste out of our way.

"Caen, it's Lucus."

Immediately we stopped.

"You see something?" I asked, slowly dropping the body. I searched for cover near the entrance to the wreckage and placed myself behind a fairly sturdy storage crate, while Vellia took cover behind what was left of a metal wall for one of the crew's quarters.

"We've got hostiles, nearing your position. They just came out of one of the caves near the wreckage?"

"Headcount?"

"About thirty, maybe forty. They're mostly those Cannibals we saw back on Taetrus, but there's a few new ones, not exactly like the one in the cave, but . . ."

"That look more like us."

"Yeah, how'd you guess?"

"We found bodies of several of these new ones inside the ship. Along with a big circular incision where they cut into the hull and began fighting inside while the ship was coming down."

"Spirits. It just doesn't get better does it?"

"Never does," I replied, peering over the crate, "How close are they to our position?"

"About fifty meters."

"Alright. I imagine these Turian-Reapers are tougher than the uglies, so go for them first. I've got an intact body here that I'm gonna bring out for the guys back at Oracle to look at, so that means everyone is gonna have to be on top of their game since all I'm gonna have is the Carnifex. Pago, give me the coordinates for the ship wreck, I'm gonna call Bonedrum."

"Copy, coordinates are as follows: Map Grid One-Delta Bravo-Foxtrot, Eight-Four-Three, Niner-Zero-Two."

"Roger that. Go ahead and start lighting them up, you too, Vell."

"On it," Vell responded, moving along the sturdiest wall to the opening of the wreckage and began firing back out into the graveyard, and instantly the blasts and sounds of rounds flying began in earnest.

I turned back to the Reaper body, holstering my Phaeston.

_And I got to carry your sorry ass out of here . . . great thinking on your part there, Caen._

I grunted as I hefted the body up on my left shoulder. I took out my Carnifex from its holster on my right hip and looked towards Vell who was occupied with throwing rounds from her Scimitar shotgun towards the approaching Reapers.

"Bonedrum, this is Feral Actual, stand by to receive coordinates for fire mission, over."

"Feral, this is Bonedrum, ready to receive when you're ready to send, over."

"Copy," I responded as I stood behind Vell, "We good to move?"

"Better now than never."

"Let's hoof it then, Pago, Lucus, watch your fire, we're moving out your way!"

Vell lead the way out, turning to face the encroaching Reaper force. She never turned their back to them as I hurried back towards a small cluster of wreckage that was a four or five hundred meters away from the Draccio's primary remains.

The run to that wreckage felt like countless lifetimes to me. Not only did I have rounds flying at me from behind, where I couldn't see where they were coming from, there were more coming down from Pago's and Lucus's perch on the plateau. All I could focus on was the next step.

One after the other.

After the other.

After the other.

"Caen! Cover me, I need to reload!"

_Fuck me!_

I spun myself around to face the large group of Reapers. I obviously now had to walk backwards _and_ fire towards those bastards at the same time. My eyes locked on a Cannibal in the front of the group, mouth agape and sending fire my way, forcing me to duck a few inches before sending a round squarely into its face. The Cannibal staggered at the force and fell back onto the ground. One down. My attention then turned to one of the Turian-Reaper hybrids who was at the front of the group. As soon as the Carnifex settled on my target, I fired again, but only hit the thing's shields. I grimaced as I let off several more shots, eventually hitting his shields, and my last round hit the bastard in the leg and blew it clean off, sending the Reaper spinning into the dust.

All that in just a few seconds.

"That enough?" I shouted over to Vell.

"Yeah!" She tersely responded.

I turned myself around and continued my run onward, "Bonedrum, this is Feral actual, I am sending target coordinates!"

"Bonedrum here, ready to receive, Feral, over."

I took a moment to steady myself as I kept running. My breathing was getting harder by the passing second due to dead weight on my shoulder, "Coordinates are . . . as follows . . . Map Grid One-Delta . . .Bravo-Foxtrot, Eight-Four-Three . . . Niner-Zero-Two! Targets are thirty or so foot-mobiles, danger close! Confirm you have received, over!"

"This is Bonedrum, we confirm reception of coordinates. Standing by to fire, five autoloaders, five rounds each, HE. Awaiting fire command, over."

A few painful seconds later, including a round bouncing off my shields, we managed to reach the cover of the debris behind a few metal plates jutting out of the ground. I threw the body down to ground as Vell and I scurried behind the plates.

"Fire them all, Bonedrum!"

"Copy, firing. First salvo away, ETA to target area is five seconds. Brace for impact, over."

Mortars can be a really terrifying weapon. Mainly because you can't hear them come down like you might be able to with regular artillery or bigger orbital weapons. Mortars can be a silent killer with a deadly efficient punch to go along with it. Bonedrum's mortars hit the rear of the group with good effect, taking out at a dozen targets. The explosions seemed to come up out of nowhere, churning the Menae lunar earth and dust like it was nothing. It engulfed the whole area in a ball of fire, and one of the rounds scored a direct hit on the Draccio's bridge, shattering and scorching the remains into countless pieces.

"Good effect on target, adjust fire, 100 meters south-west of original position, danger close!" I yelled, peering around my cover at the still-approaching Reapers.

"Copy, firing second salvo, ETA to target, five seconds. Brace, over."

Now the ground really rumbled. The rounds were landing square in the middle of the group and took out most of the remaining Reapers. I could almost see the rounds hitting the ground in slow-motion, and then erupting into massive fireballs, obscuring the Reapers from view in bunches. A particularly strong shockwave forced me to re-take cover behind the debris.

"How's it looking up there, Lucus?" I called as the blasts eventually ceased.

"Hang on," the sniper replied as a shot rang out, followed quickly by another, "That should be the last of them, for now, at least."

"Roger that," I replied as I slowly stood and turned to survey the destruction. Bonedrum's mortars had left a trail of fire and bodies, and along with our assistance with small arms, the assholes hadn't stood a chance. The Graveyard was now welcoming occupants of all types now.

"Pago, check on the shuttle so we can get the hell out of here. I've had enough of this place to last a lifetime," I commanded as I picked up the Reaper corpse again, "Hey Vell!"

"Yeah, Caen?" she responded as she took her place beside me.

"Thanks for having my back out there. That was some rough going."

"Ah, it's nothing. We didn't make it off Taetrus to get killed here."

"Let's hope our luck holds."

"Pah, we'll make our own."

* * *

**AN/: So a lot of things have happened since last I posted, a name change, if that wasn't obvious enough, and the absolutely _wonderful_ experience of law school finals! (You better thank your lucky stars not all undergrad finals are like these. Sheesh.) Anyways, I have some time off for now, and I'm slowly working my way forward with more material for this story. My hope is that I can completely conclude the Palaven/Menae arc by the next chapter and begin the forays into the unknown and known. Oh yes. Commander Shepard and the gang will be along for parts of the ride, not all. There's a lot of new stuff I'm excited to get out there. **

**Hope to see you then,**

**Esquire 6.**


	6. The Battle of Flamma's Point

**AN/: And so the shake-up can finally begin. Enjoy.**

* * *

"_**This was the home of the great god Pain, and for the first time I looked through a devilish chink into the depths of his realm. And fresh shells came down all the time."**_

_**-Ernst Jünger, **_**Storm of Steel/In Stahlgewittern**

* * *

**Chapter 6: The Battle of Flamma's Point**

After our return to Oracle following the Draccio mission, things had . . . escalated. Command had ordered the creation of a defensive line a ways to the west of Oracle base, code-named: Kilo-Mike or KM.

The reason for the creation of the defensive line was simple. Both on Palaven and Menae, Reaper troops had made their first major landings. Now, with Palaven itself under pressure, Menae became a vital launching and repair station for our navy's ships. Countless Acilus fighter ships and their bases now dotted the land-scape of the moon. Staging areas for APCs, mobile artillery, Jiris IFVs, and any other vehicle you could possibly think of. Forward Operating Bases were established along and near the KM line to support and direct the defense of the moon.

The Hierarchy moved to consolidate the chain of command on Menae by putting General Egis Corinthus in charge of the overall defense of Menae. Corinthus was no trail-blazer, but he certainly was a solid and well-experienced commander, having served as one of the chief commanders of the campaign during the War on Taetrus. Of course, this meant Blackwatch was subordinated under Corinthus' command, angering some of the more senior Blackwatch officers who for their whole careers prided themselves on receiving their marching orders direct from the Primarch of Palaven.

War has no time to deal with precedent.

Ground combat on Menae began in earnest on the eighth of October. However, much to my squad's chagrin, we weren't deployed to the fighting. Gracchus and some of the higher-ups further up the Hierarchy chain were hesitant to deploy my squad and endanger us further. As one of the very few ground units to survive Taetrus, Palaven command had unofficially blacklisted us from combat unless the situation became incredibly dire.

Gracchus had personally told us that this had happened, albeit off-the-record. We were, understandably, upset about by the Hierarchy doing this to us. What made us even more upset was the fact that our friends and comrades in Blackwatch were fighting and dying as the battle raged, but we were sitting comfortably in the rear sitting our asses throwing rocks at each other. But there wasn't really anything we could do. I did trust Gracchus to put us in the right place when the time came.

Spirits. That time and place certainly did come.

What hadn't been conveyed to us was that KM had been the _back-up _plan. Originally, forces had used these FOBs to launch an offensive against the Reapers on their left flank as they advanced towards the main facilities on Menae.

Naturally, that hadn't gone very well. The Reapers simply turned towards the attackers and made their advance through where our troops were. The Reapers were much more concerned with wiping us out compared to the average opposing force. The Hierarchy was still learning the hard way how to fight this war.

"Captain Pius!"

_"Am I dreaming, or am I awake? 'Cause it's just too good! It's just too good . . ."_ The music was all I could hear through my helmet's internal speakers as I half-slept up against a few storage crates in the early hours of the morning at FOB Dachia. My team had taken one of the compound's multi-purpose structures as our home away from home, which mostly meant a place to sleep and wait.

I felt a hand shake me awake, and my eyes opened to find a un-helmeted Vell standing over me. She was shaking her head.

"You got orders, Captain."

"Hmmph," I grunted back. I turned off my music and took Vell's hand who helped me up to my feet. "What do you think? Think this is finally it?"

"Probably," Vell replied as she placed her helmet on, and her voice changed over to helmet's filtered tone, "Why would they bother coming to get you now?"

"Captain, there's no time!" a lieutenant barked from outside the structure, "Report to General Corinthus immediately!"

"Alright, alright!" I groggily barked back, "I'm moving."

I tried to pop my neck by turning my head left and right quickly, but couldn't quite do it.

_What a start to my day._

I jogged over to Corinthus' HQ in the middle of FOB Dachia, which was covered by about a dozen or so of the cookie-cutter sturctures and a metal defensive barrier around it, all in all taking up a few square kilometers. The base sure didn't seem like much, but KM was the real defensive priority. If Dachia was going to come under attack, things were not going to be pretty.

I entered Corinthus' HQ and immediately saluted.

"Captain Pius, reporting as requested, sir."

"Captain, we have a situation developing that requires the intervention of your squad," Corinthus quickly returned my salute. Within a moment, his attention was turned back to the virtual map of the KM line on the table in front of him.

"What's the problem, General?" I asked.

Corinthus took a deep breath, "Currently the KM line is in full-contact. The whole line is getting hit pretty hard by Reaper ground forces, but we're holding. Things won't stay that way for long though." A point on the KM line was highlighted on Corinthus's map in red. The point stuck out about two centimeters more from the usual jagged orientation of the KM line. "This is Observation Post Yellow. It's probably the most crucial point in the KM line because it's the highest point and the best place for our spotters to call in close-air support and direct artillery fire. But we lost contact with OP Yellow about five minutes ago and we can't raise them."

"So, we go and reinforce the OP . . . or re-take it if necessary and hold the line," I grimly concluded.

"Affirmative, Captain," Corinthus replied, "I'm praying to the Spirits that it's just a radio malfunction. However, we can't be that optimistic with such a crucial point in the KM line. If it's on the brink, we need Feral up there to even the odds."

"Roger that, sir," I said as I un-holstered my Phaeston, "We'll do whatever we can and get the fire-support for our guys back online."

Corinthus nodded, "The OP's comms callsign is Titan. You might want to see if you can hail them when you get closer. Good luck." I didn't wait for further orders to get going.

"Where are we headed, Caen?" Lucus asked as the rest of the squad met me outside of Corinthus's HQ.

"OP Yellow, a few clicks south-west from here on the KM line. Comms are dark, and we are heading there to either reinforce or retake the OP. Make sure you bring your long-range comms pack with you, Pago."

"Copy that. But . . . Yellow?" Pago asked, "Isn't that OP on that small butte thing?"

"From the way Corinthus described it, and the location on the map, I think so."

"So we're going to have to go for a climb and stick out like a sore-thumb to the Reapers, wonderful." Vell's annoyance with our tactics was clearly growing.

"At least we're getting in the fight, at last," I responded as I gave Vell a pat on the shoulder.

"Some consolation," she grumbled back as we headed out the closest gate and began our trek to OP Yellow.

FOB Dachia was on a raised series of cliffs and escarpments near the KM line, but the butte that OP Yellow was on was taller than that, and the top of the butte where the OP was had sparse cover, and even though the Hierarchy was in love with its damn pre-fab fortifications all over the damn place, up there, it was going to be utterly useless.

We kept our pace at a strenuous jog as we made our way to the OP. As we got closer to the KM line, the sounds of combat and war grew louder. We reached a spot on the cliffs where we could observe a lot of the KM line and it was an ugly site.

Our boys and girls were in the middle of a meat grinder. They were keeping up a steady stream of fire from their trenches and bunkers along the line, but what was easier to see from this perspective were the wounded and dead being transported back away from the line. And the dead were heavily outnumbered the wounded casualties.

"Spirits," Pago croaked out.

We stopped for a few moments to stare longingly at the destruction below us, watching our defense of the Had on Taetrus being replayed and amplified beyond belief. No one said anything else. Pago's invocation of the memories of our dead long past and watching the next ones joining them was more than enough to sum up our feelings.

"Let's keep moving," I ordered with a half-hearted wave. I watched as one by one, Vell, then Pago, then lastly Lucus, peeled themselves away from the carnage.

_Fear is like the breeze. _

_Fear is like the breeze. _

_Fear is like the breeze . . ._

I began repeating my mantra as my squad starting to come within visual range of the butte upon which OP Yellow sat. We could see tracers flying in large swarms over the top of the butte. Luckily for us, the cliffs ran up pretty close to the rear side of the butte which made the climb up top a bit easier. I motioned to my squad to go ahead and head up, as I took a knee and activated my comms, "Titan, Titan, come in, over."

"This is Titan! Go ahead over!" a frenzied voice yelled.

"Titan, this is Feral actual from Blackwatch, I'm currently leading a squad up the butte, what's your status?"

"FUBAR! We are under heavy attack and have sustained eighty percent casualties! My radio operator is KIA, and we are dangerously low on ammo!"

"Alright, we're almost to your position, just hang in there Titan."

"Oh thank the fucking spirits for that!"

I returned to my feet as I used my thruster packs to jet myself up to where I could grab the top ledge of the butte's rock formation and pull myself up top-side. I found Vell waiting for me.

"Pago and Lucus have already moved to reinforce the point. I'm not going to be much use up here. Think I could do something more productive?" she asked.

"A-fucking-firmative. These guys up here need ammo and medical supplies, think you can make a supply run?"

She nodded, "I'll be back. Don't have too much fun without me."

Vell activated her thrusters and flew back past me as I moved up to the other side of the butte. I eventually had to crouch as I neared the fortications, that already looked horribly worse for wear. They surrounded the front edge of the butte, and had several parts where the short walls were bits were bent and dented, or just blasted off their mountings completely. There were only a handful of Legion regulars who were fighting back, with bodies all along the defenses, left where they'd fallen. Lucus had made himself a firing hole through one of the dented sections on the 11 o'clock portion of the small half circle at the front of the OP overlooking the approaching enemy forces. Pago was at the twelve o'clock of the half-circle, firing away as a Captain sat next to him, who was trying to raise Corinthuis on a damaged comms set.

"Baseplate, this is Titan, do you read over?" the Captain shouted as I took cover behind the barricade next to him, "Damn it!"

"Having trouble?" I chuckled, holding out my hand, "I'm Captain Pius. I called on the comms earlier, Feral actual."

"Spirits, I'm glad your team showed up, Captain," the OP commander sighed, "Captain Sertorius Flamma."

We shook hands briefly before I spoke up again, "I had one of my squad head back to Dachia to get some supplies for your guys. How many of you are left?"

"Eight. We had more than two dozen up here when the shooting started, but between the damn Harvesters doing gun-runs on us, and these new Marauder and Brute reapers, we didn't stand much of a chance," Flamma grimaced, squinting his eyes in pain as he readjusted himself behind the wall.

"Well, KM needs your eyes to get air and artillery support back online. Pago!"

"Sir!" Pago responded as took cover and awaited my orders.

"Give the Captain here your comms pack. Captain Flamma, we'll keep up the fire so you can start designating targets along the line. Hopefully we'll get the resupply soon, but in the meantime, we can't let up on the Reapers. You ready?"

Flamma looked down for a second, but then looked back towards me, "Ready when you are, Captain Pius."

_And so it begins . . ._

I stuck my head over the barricade and was immediately met with the sight of what seemed to be countless thousands of Reaper ground troops pouring towards the KM line and the butte. The Reaper capital ships were trouncing around in the distance, decimating whatever traces of our forces were left there.

A hail of enemy fire greeted me back. I had to force myself back down behind cover or else my head would've quickly been sent clean off. I decided to use Lucus' tactic of finding a damaged part of the OP's barricade and using that to ward of returning fire so I had a chance to defend.

I slid over to my right and found a slit in the metal where I could fire down towards the bottom of the butte where Reaper troops were trying to climb up to us. I let off a few bursts to send their first attempts tumbling down in a cloud of dust to failure. I was starting to see and hear the trademark blasts of mortar fire as Flamma zeroed the artillery in on the approaching groups of enemies. A couple of the new Marauders had made their way to the bottom of the butte, and I made my presence known by firing and dropping one of them with two medium-length bursts of the Phaeston.

Before I had a chance to engage the other two, I heard Pago yell, "Harvester inbound, ten o'clock!"

"Get him if you can Pago!" I screamed back as I pushed myself as close to the barricade as I could. There wasn't much I could do to avoid the Harvester's fire at this point. Now, I understood why Flamma's unit had taken so many losses. A temporary OP was screwed fighting from up here.

Sure enough, the Harvester managed to fire away despite Pago's and Lucus's attempts to shoo it off with their gunfire. The winged monster swooped down low and gave us a good long bombardment from its cannons, destroying and damaging more of the remaining fortifications on the edges. The bastard claimed a few more of Flamma's troops to boot as it flew off, suppression complete for the time being.

Lucus was away from his firing hole trying to give medical attention to one of the criticially wounded troops.

"Lucus, get back to the line!" I growled, "We don't have time for that!"

"I'm not letting him fucking die!"

"You want to let _us_ all die?" I roared back, "Get back up there, _now!"_

"Low blow, Caen," Lucus muttered as he returned his attention to firing on the enemy.

A few moments later, Vell returned with several bandoliers and a whole case of thermal clips and grenades. She went around to the surviving troops and each of our squad, handing out ammo. I meanwhile went back to the two Marauders who had escaped my attention earlier. They had gotten pretty bold by standing out in the open, but an overcharged thermal clip was more than enough to chew through each of their shields and their Reaper-mader armor to end their suffering.

But the Reapers weren't playing around for much longer. The Reapers started sending up Brutes along with larger waves of Husks, the human-bastardized Reapers. They knew we couldn't keep up with such a large group of hostiles for very long. Gunships were now coming in to target the enemy forces nearing the KM line, but they were immediately countered by Harvesters, eager to repeat what we saw happen outside the Had.

As the Reapers and our Mantis gunships started dog-fighting, missile strikes from Jiris IFVs, which had been the workhorses during the War on Taetrus, began hitting even closer to our lines, but it still wasn't enough.

"Captain Pius!" Flamma called to me from his position, "We ne-"

Flamma didn't get a chance to finish his sentence. A lucky shot had snuck through a tiny opening in the damaged defenses and struck him in the left side of his face. He immediately slumped over next to the radio.

_Oh fuck!_

"Vell, get to Flamma! Give me updates!" I shouted as I returned fire.

"On it," she calmly replied as she hurried over from the left side of the OP to Flamma, sliding in on one knee to begin administering first aid.

I looked back down the butte to see a Brute climbing its way up with Marauders ordering up Husks behind it. I pulled out a grenade from my belt, activated it, and waited a few seconds before chucking it down the cliff at the Brute.

"Pago, adjust, front of the butte, we're getting forces on our direct front."

"Copy that, adjusting fire."

The grenade exploded right in the Brute's face, sending it spinning down to the ground, crushing several Husks and a Marauder who were unlucky enough to not get out of the way in time. Pago quickly picked up his fire together with mine to take care of the stragglers.

"Flamma is breathing, Caen," Vell said with a grunt, "But he's in bad shape. His left eye is done, and the front of his head is in pieces."

"Roger that, how's KM holding?"

"Barely," she responded, "I'll try to call in some support for them but they're probably going to lose the left flank soon and then push to surround us and the whole cliffs area where Dachia is."

"Well we're in the shit now," Lucus laughed as he fired another shot, "And I thought Taetrus was bad. I wonder if we ask them nicely, maybe we can get a timeout!"

"Yeah," Pago sighed, "And then they'll turn us into one of those fucked-up bastards!"

"Would it really be that bad?" Lucus snickered.

"Sometimes I wonder if he's really joking," Pago muttered under his breath.

The Reaper forces were now directly on top of the KM line to both the left and right. Whatever support Vell could call in wouldn't do much good, so she just redirected it towards whatever large groups of enemies were approaching. Our boys and girls were fighting hard, but in the face of sheer numbers, there wasn't a lot they could do now.

I shuffled over to Flamma, who was lying up against the wall. His breathing was erratic and often it looked like it took most of his focus to do so. He looked rough, with the left side of his face turned into a raw, blueish mush. Most of his face plating on that side was gone, and only some of the right side of the face had any semblance of life in it.

"How are you feeling?" I asked as I handed over my rifle to Vell who used it to keep up fire down at the bottom of the butte.

"Pretty screwed . . . to be honest," he croaked out. His right eye darted around quickly as he spoke.

"I hate to tell you this, but the KM line's falling right now on both sides."

"I . . . know. You have to go."

I sighed as I placed my head in my right hand, "I'm sorry, Captain. If I had gotten here faster . . ."

"Don't say . . . that. . . You . . . kept us . . . in this fight."

"Yeah, but we didn't win it."

" . . . not yet. Give . . . me . . . the comms pack," I grabbed the pack from Vell's position and handed it over to him. He placed it softly in his lap, "I'll . . . transmit . . . broken arrow . . . call a strike . . . on our position. My men . . . will cover . . . your retreat. Get going."

"Lucus, Pago, Vell . . . we're leaving," I ordered with a lot of hesitation. Vell turned and handed me back my rifle as she began head with the others to the east side of the butte and back to the cliffs. I offered Flamma one last salute, which he returned.

"Thank you . . . for such an honor . . . to fight alongside you . . . Captain Pius."

"As it was to fight with you," I sputtered as I turned around and ran off. I could feel myself getting emotional at Flamma's gesture as I met with the others. We leapt off the rear edge of the butte back to the cliffs and the path back to Dachia. We didn't hesitate to sprint away at the ordinance that was probably coming in to send off Flamma and his remaining troops.

"Baseplate . . . this is Captain . . . Flamma, we are . . . broken arrow . . . OP Yellow . . . send all you . . . have," Flamma's voice crackled over the comms.

"Roger Yellow, it's been an honor."

"Likewise."

"Baseplate authorizes heavy ordinance, Map Grid Four-Bravo Kilo-Mike, One-Two-One, Niner-Three-Six. Five rounds, fire when ready, Saxum."

We scurried behind a big rock-wall which was just in sight of the butte, which was four or five hundred meters away now. A Harvester was circling like a buzzard over a dead body, firing away at Flamma and his men.

"Baseplate, this is Saxum. Saxum copies all, five rounds, armor piercing, depleted uranium, firing."

Five heavy thuds came from the distance as some of our biggest guns, the one-hundred ninety millimeter Calax, let loose a salvo on OP Yellow. The rounds gave off their characteristic 'whiz' sound as they flew over our heads. And then, all of a sudden a bright flash came, as the first round impacted, splitting the butte in half and a massive cloud of dust into the air. Then the second and third rounds impacted, their flashes piercing through the dust as the butte was further pulverized into powder. No one was alive up there anymore. Then the fourth and fifth rounds came, and what was left of the butte was sent rolling down into nothingness. The dust cloud was enormous, and once it began to clear after about a half a minute as we stood to survey the damage, the butte had almost been wiped from existence. Only a small cone shaped dagger of rock pointed up from the ground.

Flamma's Point was no more._**1**_

What made this day even better was now our way back had been blocked by the aftermath of an explosion where a pile of rocks now blocked the way.

"Guess we have to take the long way back, eh Caen?" Lucus chirped, "I'll take point."

"Be my guest," I said as we turned to the north and began the long trek back to FOB Dachia.

"How long are we going to keep losing these fucking battles? This is getting old, fast," Vell groaned.

"Command has to figure out what the fuck to do first," Pago replied, "We're going to lose a lot more battles than we win for the time being."

"Yeah, and lose millions while we're at it?" Vell growled as she pointed over her shoulder as we moved, "They're burning Palaven now. There's no time to try and throw shit at the wall and hope something sticks. The Reapers are going to beat us if we don't start playing fucking offense."

"That sounds like some of Lieutenant Kordo talking," I chuckled.

"Spirits," Lucus sighed, "I wish that bigmouth was still here to whip command into shape. Kordo sure as hell made every Blackwatch recruit over the past two decades better off because of what he did."

Lieutenant Yeovan Kordo. The drill instructor and curator of the Blackwatch's hell-weeks and training programs. He talked the talk and walked the walk of a real soldier, bringing the hammer of the spirits' vengeance down on anyone who didn't learn the ways of war-fighting properly. He had died during the War on Taetrus, as one of the first casualties. Shockingly, it had been from friendly fire from a regular Legion unit. The offender felt so much guilt for accidentally killing Kordo that he committed suicide. The Turian way was harsh to force people to take that route.

But as they say, the Turians are hard ones to please.

And speaking of Taetrus, we managed to run into another FOB on our trek back to Dachia, commanded by a familiar face. As we passed the front entrance, manned by a few regular Legion soldiers, the dark grey face and white tattoos of General Adrien Victus was there among the troops. All of us immediately double-taked.

_Why wasn't he on the KM Line?_

"Something the matter with you four?" Victus cocked his head in curiousity.

That snapped me right out of my daze.

"Sorry, sir," I quickly replied, hoping to save at least a little bit of face, "I'm just surprised you weren't down on the KM line, General Victus."

"One of the great mysteries," he chuckled back, "Where are you all headed?"

"We just came from OP Yellow, and we're heading back to FOB Dachia."

"Tough going up there. Saw the light show," the General bluntly added.

"Have you been attacked yet?" I asked.

"Affirmative, we got hit by a wave a minute or two ago, just a probing attack."

"Want us to lend a hand for a little bit?" I offered. As much as I knew FOB Dachia needed us, Victus' FOB was in an even more precarious situation as likely the most forward-most defensive position of whatever defensive line was getting haphazardly put together as we spoke.

"I certainly can't turn Blackwatch down if they're offering. Come on in."

The front gate swung down as Victus waved us through.

FOB Kalros was laid out in a tight oval. Where we arrived was the southern end, and the base was laid out in almost a straight line to the north, where an unfortified sheer cliff face was almost all the protection you could ever need on that side.

"I think I remember you, Caenus Pius, am I correct?" Victus said as he turned back for a moment as he lead us towards the north side of the FOB.

"Yes sir, it's been a while since Ijura."

"Seems like forever ago," Lucus piped up.

"Ah, Lucus Albilin," Victus replied with a hint of cheeriness, "It certainly has been. I remember you almost talking my unit's comms operator's ear off."

"Yeah," Lucus fake-chuckled as he quickly shut himself up.

"You two did some good work covering my men back in Ijura on Taetrus, Pius. Think you can manage with the four you have?" The general turned and stopped as we reached the far northern end of the compound.

"Can't promise success with the record we've earned so far, but you'll get our full effort, sir."

"And that's all I can ask for," Victus replied as he headed to his makeshift HQ building, "They've been dropping troops from orbit right into the middle of the FOB, so I'm not sure where you'd think your troops would fit best, Pius."

I glanced around and found that most of the protective rock formations on the ground were close to Victus' building. "Here is probably fine, there's the most cover here, and I'd prefer to have some room to move after being cooped up at OP Yellow."

"Alright then," Victus nodded, "Hopefully Vakarian will be back soon and can give us a little more firepower."

"Vakarian?" I asked, "_THE_ Vakarian?"

"Affirmative, Pius. He was with us earlier this morning after KM fell. He had been supervising down there with some other officers. Said it was a mess trying to keep things together."

"It didn't look much better from where we were sitting," Lucus snarked as he sat down behind a flat-topped rock and laid his rifle on it.

"Fair enough," Victus chuckled.

Things were eerily quiet for a little bit. After the fight for Flamma's Point, sitting in this sort of silence in some ways felt like a worse fate than more fighting, shooting, and screaming. But my training kept my mind from wandering too much into crazyland.

_Fear is like the breeze. Fear is like the breeze. Fear is like . . ._

My mantras were interrupted by a loud howling noise that felt like it was right inside my helmet.

"Orbital drops, incoming!" a voice to my ten o'clock, probably one of Victus' men, shouted.

A few big meteor looking objects came flaming down and smashed into the ground in front of us, revealing a whole four-man fireteam of Marauders to the left side, a big group of Cannibals on the right, and a Brute to finish it all off in the center.

"Open fire!" Victus yelled from behind us.

"Don't need to tell me twice," Vell said as my squad fanned out, with Lucus staying in his position to provide sniper cover.

"Hit the Marauders first! They're in control of the others!" I commanded as I rotated my attention to the right to take care of the Cannibals while the other took care of the bigger targets. I winced as I let off a long burst into the leading Cannibal, killing it, while a few enemy rounds smacked into my shields. I rolled forward to my right behind a couple of boxes for cover. I discharged the half-empty thermal clip and effortlessly loaded a new one as I turned around the boxes to fire again, and dropped two more of the Cannibals with the fresh clip.

"How's it going over there?" I asked as I cooked a grenade and threw it around the corner blindly.

"Marauders are down," Lucus answered as my grenade went off and a Cannibal's decapitated arm flew past, confirming my kill, "The Brute is moving towards Vell and Pago, probably should go help them out."

"Copy that," I answered as I reloaded my Phaeston again and popped out of cover. Vell and Pago were firing away at the armored Brute, which was chasing and reaching after them whenever either of them tried to get close. I began firing at the monster as soon as it turned its back to me, but that quickly made me the center of the Brute's attention. The Brute wheeled around and began bounding after me at full speed, its eyes glowing a menacing red. I was forced to use my jump packs to leap with a dive to my right, under its out-stretched claws. After a combat roll, and getting myself back to my feet, I resumed my firing as Vell and Pago moved up to support me on my right. But it didn't take much more collective fire from everyone in the FOB to send the Brute to an early grave.

"Not bad, everyone," I said as I shared a fist bump with Vell and Pago, and gave a thumbs up in Lucus' direction, "Guess we still got it." Only a few seconds passed before another load roar came from above, "Time for round two!"

This time the drops placed not one, but two Brutes in between us and Lucus' position as well as a smattering of Marauders, and about a dozen Husks.

The firing re-commenced in earnest, as we kept our backs to the south as we fired towards the north, weeding out the targets one by one, methodically. Thermal clips came and went as our weapons expended round after round. It was at times like this that the shooting felt more like a game rather than real life. Once you got to a high enough body-count to have no idea what the total number could even be, war seemed to lose the gravitas. It desensitized you to the brutality. Of course, the Reapers were not, in any means, an enviable foe, and the amount of flesh they threw into battle definitely felt unreal.

My brain was on autopilot. I had my reflexes trained to the acquire-shoot-kill-reset cycle that I could do it asleep. With room to maneuver, the Reapers didn't stand much of a chance at bringing us down, at least with their regular forces. Those damn brutes though.

Once we got fairly close to the south gate, Vell, Pago, and I were forced to circle our way back around and under the prying arms of the Brutes and start our backpedel to the north again. Unfortunately, Pago got unlucky and was tripped up by one of the two Brutes chasing after us, and Vell and I immediately used our thrust-packs to get back to help Pago out.

"Watch your heads!" Lucus yelled over the comms, as a round from his Punisher darted in between Vell and I. The bullet landed a perfectly on the head of the Brute bearing down on Pago, who pulled himself along the ground out of the collapsing corpse in the nick of time. Pago used his thrust packs to propel himself up into the air and back onto his feet right in front of us.

But before we had a chance to do anything to the last Brute, a hail of gunfire came from the south gate from behind the Brute, sending the Reaper into the dirt with haste.

"Thanks for . . ." I started to say before I was utterly dumb-founded at what I saw.

It was Commander Shepard. Yes, that Commander Shepard that saved everyone's asses more times than I could count at this point. Shepard was the closest to gods and spirits walking near us, even more so than Blackwatch to Turians. When Commander Shepard showed up, you took fucking notice.

Shepard was decked out in his trademark N7 armor, the signature of Humanity's best troops, not much unlike Blackwatch. But Shepard was an anomaly even among those guys. Shepard stood at about six and half feet tall with tan skin, a round jaw, brown eyes, and dark buzzed hair. I honestly can't describe him in words to do any real justice to him to be honest. He looked the part of the grizzled human space marine. With him was another human, who was even more muscled than Shepard was, as well as the Turian arbiter himself, Garrus Vakarian.

"Vakarian, sir!" I snapped to a salute, as did Pago and Vell, "Captain Caenus Pius, Blackwatch. Thanks for assist."

"At ease," Vakarian replied, "Looks like you all didn't do too bad for yourselves either."

"Thank you, sir," I said, relaxing my guard, "I guess you're here for some other reason than just general kindess and benevolence towards all, Commander Shepard."

"That I am," Shepard replied, "I'm looking for General Victus. Know where to find him?"

"He's in his HQ building at the north side of the FOB. I'll take you there immediately," I answered as I motioned for everyone to follow, with Pago and Vell silently taking my immediate flanks.

"I have to say," Vakarian continued, "I'm surprised to see Blackwatch out here."

"I think we're a bit surprised ourselves, sir," I said as I scratched my nervous itch behind my neck, "We were defending OP Yellow further to the west. I guess you either heard or saw the fireworks."

"Yeah, I did," Vakarian, "KM was a disaster today. The Cliffs will probably be surrounded by tomorrow."

"Just another day in the office," I replied dryly.

"What happened at OP Yellow?" Shepard asked. I honestly was surprised at his interest.

"My squad was ordered to reinforce their position since their radio was down and they were directing fire support for their section of the KM defensive line just a few clicks from here. We helped defend under heavy fire, since they were down to less than a third of their troops. Yellow's commander, Captain Flamma, took a round to the head that somehow didn't kill him. KM began to fall, Flamma ordered us to retreat, and he called in a broken arrow. Command called in a Calax five-round strike on the OP. Nothing's left out there except dust."

"Damn, that's a hell of strike," the other human with Shepard's party commented.

"Hell of a way to go," Shepard said with a hint of glum.

"Yeah," I replied as we reached Victus' building, "And this is only the beginning of the damn war. Oh, and I heard Earth got hit, Commander. My sympathies. Got some VIPs for you here, General!"

"I appreciate it," Shepard said with a nod as he walked past me to speak to General Victus. Pago, Vell, and I quickly moved away and isolated ourselves from the growing crowd around Victus's HQ building.

"Can you believe this shit?" Vell whispered as Pago and I closed in to hear her, "Shepard _and_ Vakarian? That's some battlefield fucking royalty."

"No kidding," Pago added as he let his Revenant hang loose in his right arm, "Wonder what's going on. Has to be big if both of them are here."

Of course when we peered over to Lucus, he was talking to Vakarian, gesturing to his Armax Punisher. We headed over to see what the discussion was about.

"I can't believe someone actually retrofitted one of these. May I?" Vakarian asked kindly as he held his hand out to Lucus' rifle.

"Sure, but if you break it, it's on you."

"I think I can handle it," Vakarian responded cheekily as he shouldered the rifle, "Damn. Even an aftermarket Cirpirtine scope. Where the hell did you get all this?"

"Our quartermaster at Blackwatch is a bit of a mad-genius type. He built it for me before the War on Taetrus. It's been my baby ever since."

"She is a beauty," Vakarian replied as he handed the rifle back over, "I have to admit, I'm a bit jealous."

Lucus laughed, "It's fine. Get it all the time. Glad someone appreciates some good hardware unlike my squadmates."

"Whatever," I replied, "If only your talent was as big as your mouth."

"Woah, woah," Lucus sarcastically raised his free-hand in mock offense, "And I thought commanding officers were supposed to be considerate of their subordinates."

"That's because they haven't been around you enough," I chuckled as I gave Lucus a half-hearted punch on the shoulder which he returned.

"You guys been together a while?" Vakarian asked.

"Yeah, Lucus and I have fought together since the beginning of the War on Taetrus," I bluntly answered, "Pago and Vell were afterwards, but we made it off Taetrus when it got hit, so-"

"Wait," Vakarian interrupted before I had a chance to continue, "You guys were _on_ Taetrus when the Reapers invaded?"

"That's an affirmative," I responded, "We were at a FOB there on guard duty, got a direct hit from a Reaper ship, nursed a wounded shuttle to Spaedar, and hitched a ride off-world. Hell of a story, and a hell of a lot of luck."

"That's putting it lightly," Vakarian said with a hint of awe.

_That impressed Vakarian? I guess we did do something a little special then._

"So what brings you all here, Vakarian?" Vell asked.

"Big shake-up in chain of command. Fedorian is dead."

"Dead?" I asked, "I thought he was supposed to be negotiating some big rendezvous coming up soon?" Vakarian seemed a little surprised that I knew about that, "I just know someone who's working as a liaison officer for the summit, I promise I haven't been stealing classified info, sir."

Vakarian chuckled for a moment, then replied, "I'm not asking any questions, don't worry. But, Fedorian was actually on-site here in Menae and couldn't get out. He tried to evac in a shuttle and got shot down."

"Damn," Pago said, "So I guess that means . . ."

"Yes. Victus is the new Primarch."

All of us were silent for a minute, letting that information sink in, as we watched Shepard relay the news to Victus. He seemed a bit deflated at the news, but eventually reclaimed his composure as Shepard walked away and motioned to speak to Garrus and the other human in his squad.

"Captain Pius!" Victus called from his HQ.

"Sir!" I replied back as I hurried over and stood at attention in front of the General.

"As I'm sure you've probably heard from Vakarian, I've been appointed by the Hierarchy as Palaven's Primarch."

"Yes, sir."

"Because of this new development, I have a request to make of you and your team."

"What is it, sir?"

"I know this may be hard to hear, but I have to leave here to help coordinate a summit to possibly bring troops to Menae and Palaven to begin a real counter-attack. As apart of that effort, and some other operations that may come in the near future, I am ordering you and your team to accompany me out of the fight here."

I gulped. Even though Victus was now the supreme commander in the field, I wanted to speak up and protest. I wanted to say that my fight was here, and my brothers and sisters in arms were here, and walking away would feel like a disgrace after everything that had happened. But I didn't. I didn't have the courage or bravery to do so. Deep down in my soul, I knew that if your commander gave you an order, you had to follow it, even if at the time it was painful. As much as I didn't want to admit it, this order was likely the Spirits answering Vell's earlier gripe. We were not as good at defense as we were at offense. I had to swallow my pride and get in line.

"Roger that sir," I finally replied, "I'll get my team together and we'll be ready to move out ASAP."

"Thank you Captain," Victus said, with a hint of remorse in his voice. It was obvious that we were feeling the same pain on walking away. But the Reapers didn't give a shit about our feelings.

And by the Spirits, we weren't going to let them fucking win this war over feelings.

* * *

**Footnotes:**

_**1.**_** Captain Flamma was posthumously decorated for his actions in directing the fire support and defending OP Yellow. Currently at the site of what was OP Yellow is a war memorial in remembrance of all those who perished in the initial operations against the Reapers on Menae.**

* * *

**AN/: Yeah. That's a big change. I decided to take this direction not too long ago in order to give a more-fleshed out version of what I would think would be the most realistic beginning and establishment of a focused multi-species special forces unit. ****There's going to be a lot of discussion and talking about that next chapter, so I won't go into too much detail right now.**** I also added and modified some dialogue from the game for the reasons in order to accommodate the changes I've made so far to the collective ME story-line. Like I said before, you can disagree or agree with my changes as much as you'd like, these are just my opinions on what it would look like if these changes were apart of the actual story.**

**But please do let me know what you guys think, if you feel inclined to do so.**

**I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, whether you were with family or not. Think of this chapter as a late Christmas present.**

**Fröhliche Weihnachten und ein glückliches neu Jahr!**

**Esquire 6.**


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